Philosophy of Education Society of Japan
President
Yasuo IMAI (Japan Women’s University)

E-Journal of Philosophy of Education:
International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan
Editorial Board
Chief Editor
Morimichi KATO (Sophia University)
Board Members
Mika OKABE (Osaka University)
Fumio ONO (Doshisha University)
Satoshi TANAKA (The University of Tokyo)

Title: E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education
Society of Japan, Vol. 4
Published: 24 August 2019
Republished in New Edition: October 2020
© 2019 Philosophy of Education Society of Japan
ISSN 2435-5364
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japanis published annually by the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan. The Office Address: Division of Basic
Theories of Education, Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo Bunkyo-ku,
Tokyo 113-0033, Japan. Email: phil.ed.soc.jp＠gmail.com

Contents
The 4th Research Promotion Award Articles (2018)

Dewey’s Resistance to Totalitarianism: Focusing on The Relationship Between
the Theory of Esthetic Experience and Politics in His Works of the 1930s
Kengo NISHIMOTO

1

The Concept of “Subject” in the Philosophy of the Kyoto School: Focusing on
the Thinking of Motomori Kimura and Masaaki Kosaka
Mayumi YAMADA

18

Symposium
Competence: A Critical Approach to Contemporary Education

Education Without Consideration of Human Inquiry: Flaws in Arguments
on Competencies
Ryohei MATSUSHITA
Possibilities and Pitfalls of Competency-Based Education
Masahiro NASU

36

44

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

Teaching for the Possibility of Being Taught: World-Centred Educationin an Age of Learning
Gert BIESTA

50

Teaching for the possibility of Ignorant Citizen in the Context
of Education in Japan
Shigeo KODAMA

65

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

70

Round Table

Reconsidering the Intersection of Politics and Education: East Asian Perspectives 81
Shigeki IZAWA
Masaki TAKAMIYAHektor K. T. YAN
Cheuk-Hang LEUNG
Ren-Jie Vincent LIN

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

Dewey’s Resistance to Totalitarianism:
Focusing on The Relationship Between the Theory of
Esthetic Experience and Politics in His Works of the 1930s
Kengo NISHIMOTOThe University of Tokyo
Abstract
This paper examines the relationship between Dewey’s theory of “esthetic experience” and his
political thought in the 1930s. Mainly, this paper focuses on Dewey’s resistance to totalitarianism
based on the issue of passionate mobilization to totalitarianism by using art which W. Benjaminclaimed. In the 1930s, Dewey criticized the use of art in totalitarian states. In Freedom and Culture(1939), Dewey says that a totalitarian regime controls the whole life of all its subjects by its hold overfeelings, desires, emotions, as well as opinions through propaganda. However, on the other hand,
Dewey writes that works of art are the most compelling of the means of communication by which
emotions are stirred and opinions formed. For Dewey, art is in an unstable position. His concept of art
cannot be separated from the theory of esthetic experience, which he also developed in the 1930s.
Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discusses whether Dewey’s theory of esthetic experience andthought of art might aid in his resistance to totalitarianism. To elaborate this, this paper is arranged into
three sections. First, we will look at two points: On the one hand, Dewey’s thought in the 1930ssuggests the importance of culture, especially art, as a response to totalitarianism. On the other hand,
Dewey’s theory of esthetic experience contains within it the danger of working in affinity withtotalitarianism. The second section will claim that esthetic experience includes dimensions of both themediacy and immediacy of art by focusing on the making and appreciation of works of art. In addition,
between both dimensions of esthetic experience, there is the chance for the “leap”, a chance for thecreation of new possibilities. Finally, the leap of esthetic experience will be interpreted as a counter tototalitarianism’s encompassing of life. The major focus of this paper is the importance ofcommunication brought about by the mediacy of esthetic experience.
Keywords
aesthetics and education, aestheticizing of politics, life, immediacy and mediacy, culture, democraticsocialism

2

K. NISHIMOTO

Introduction
This study examines the relationship between Dewey’s theory of “esthetic
experience” and his political thought in the 1930s. Mainly, this study focuses on Dewey’s
resistance to totalitarianism. In the 1930s, Dewey defined both Nazi Germany and theSoviet Union as totalitarian states and, in particular, criticized the use of art in these twostates. However, to date, there have been few works that discuss the relationship between
Dewey’s theory of esthetic experience, which he also developed in the 1930s, and his
resistance to totalitarianism. Therefore, this study discusses whether Dewey’s theory of
esthetic experience might aid in his resistance to totalitarianism.
In finding that it does aid resistance, the discussion then turns to W. Benjamin’s
concept of the “aestheticizing of politics.”1 Benjamin claimed that aesthetics also carries
the risk of being used to advance a totalitarian regime.2 In addition, this study looks ahead
to more contemporary discussions about “aesthetics and education” that have been
carried out since the 1990s in Japan.3
This discussion shows the signification of aesthetics: that it can propose “somethingthat brings the indivisible, which reason cannot measure” (Suzuki 1999: 163–164). This
discussion also informs what the task of aesthetics is. T. Nishimura claimed that, sincemodern aesthetics has led to an “easy identification with the absolute” (Suzuki 1999:
163–164), “we must object to the complicity between modern education and aesthetics
in their specifically modern meanings” (Nishimura 2010: 98). Aesthetics, as non-rational,
has the potential to puncture purposive rationality, which designates the limits of modern
education. However, it is necessary to avoid the unification of aesthetics and absolutism.
This paper is arranged in three sections. First, we will look at two points: On the one
hand, Dewey’s thought in the 1930s suggests the importance of culture, especially art, as
Benjamin takes up art, especially films, to set human beings free through training them “in the apperceptions andreactions needed to deal with a vast apparatus whose role in their lives is expanding almost daily” on the premiseof the loss of the “aura” that secures the authenticity of works of art (Benjamin 1986: 382; Benjamin 2008: 26;
emphasis in original). In contrast, according to Benjamin, fascism “sees its salvation in granting expressions to themasses—but on no account granting them rights” (Benjamin 1986: 382; Benjamin 2008: 41). This is the famous
confrontation between the “aestheticizing of politics” and the “politicizing of art” (Benjamin 1986: 382; Benjamin
2008: 42; emphasis in original).
2This study considers the issue of passionate mobilization to totalitarianism by using art, and Benjamin’s conceptof the “aestheticizing of politics,” through an examination of Dewey’s theory of esthetic experience. Y. Imai points
out the similarity of Dewey’s and Benjamin’s aesthetics from the perspective of “the response to the modern
condition of the poverty of experience” (Imai 1998: 156). However, Imai criticizes the structure of purposive
rationality in Dewey’s theory of esthetic experience.
3
T. Nishimura (2010) describes the series of discussions in “Aesthetics and Education” in the 1990s in Japan.
1

The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

Dewey’s Resistance to Totalitarianism

3

a response to totalitarianism. On the other hand, Dewey’s theory of esthetic experience
contains within it the danger of working in affinity with totalitarianism. Not dwelling on
this last point, the second section will move on to examine the relation between theimmediacy and mediacy of esthetic experience, which will reveal that there is a “leap” inDewey’s theory of esthetic experience. Furthermore, this leap creates unprecedented
possibilities. Finally, this paper argues through an analysis of Dewey’s treatment of
totalitarianism that the points of employing his theory of esthetic experience against
totalitarianism are social change, accomplished through the communication that art
provides, and the creation of unprecedented possibilities.
1. Dewey in the 1930s
1-1. Dewey’s Political Thought in the 1930s
Today, studies about Dewey’s political thought in the 1930s, which was responding
to economic and political situations such as the Great Depression and the eve of WorldWar II, have been gaining increased attention.
As M. Sato (2012) and R. Westbrook (1991) pointed out, in the 1930s Dewey
became sympathetic with socialism after he visited the Soviet Union and came to identify
his political thought as “democratic socialism.”4 Dewey’s “democratic socialism” hasdeepened through the struggle against the “three social systems that branched off after
the economic depression: the state socialism of Stalinism; the state capitalism of the New
Deal; and the totalitarianism of the fascist states” (Sato 2012: 106). A problem common
to these three social systems is the tendency to “reduce the development of free
individuality by enhancing state function” (Sato 2012: 112). In contrast, Dewey’s idea ofsocial democracy targets the development of individuality through interaction andcommunication with one’s surrounding environment. This is different from the “oldindividualism” that divided individuals. Dewey calls it democracy as “a way of living”(CD: 226). 5
4

Dewey’s series of articles about his visit to the Soviet Union was published in the New Republic and later
published in book form as Impression of Soviet Russia in 1928 (ISR). According to Morita, Dewey “found aspectacular social experiment trying to create a collaborative humanity” in the Soviet Union. While initiallyevaluating the experience positively, Dewey later realized that “the principles of people’s spontaneous cooperation
are incompatible with dogmatic Marxism, a government-certified ideology” ( Morita 2004: 99). Thereafter, Dewey
criticizes the intensification of Stalin’s dictatorship in the Soviet Union and the communist’s support of violent
revolution. Additionally, Dewey became convinced of this critical position after the Trotsky trials (Inoue 2008).
5
R. Bernstein (2000) emphasizes the sense of the time when he reinterprets Dewey’s article “Creative Democracy”(1939). Bernstein also points out that Dewey expressed disappointment at the strengthening of Stalin’s dictatorship
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

4

K. NISHIMOTO

The main focus of this study is on Dewey’s resistance to totalitarianism. H. Morita
recognizes Dewey as “anticipating Arendt” in his criticism not only of Nazism but also
the Soviet Union after Stalin, which represented an intensification of the totalitarianregime (Morita 2004: 98). It is noteworthy that Dewey became the honorary chair of theCommittee for Cultural Freedom, which was established to resist the advancement of
totalitarianism. The manifest of the committee warned of the risk that the suppression ofcultural freedom under a totalitarian regime might also occur in the United States anddeclared that securing the sphere of the free creativity of culture could defend democracy(Hook 1987: 248–274). Dewey’s stance against totalitarianism can be understood as adefense of “cultural freedom,” as a defense of the free development of the individuality(Inoue 2008: 194) .6
1-2. The Defense of Political Freedom and the Emancipation of Individuality
Dewey made cultural freedom and cultural creativity the key points of Individualism,
Old and New (1930), Liberalism and Social Action (1935), and Culture and Freedom(1939), written as a response to the social situation at the time. Dewey says that culture islocated “outside of political institutions,” and it is a “complex of conditions which tax theterms upon which human beings associate and live together” (FC: 67). The problem is,then, “to know what kind of culture is so free in itself that it conceives and begets political
freedom as its accompaniment and consequence” (FC: 67).
In order to defend cultural freedom, it is necessary to rethink social and economic
systems and technology that restrict individuals’ actions. However, Dewey does not insist
on removing them. For Dewey, protecting the potential for individuality is required.
Individuality consists of the interaction between individuals and the environment, which
includes social and economic systems and technology. In addition, this argument links
the discussion to societal reform through communication. For Dewey, art became criticalto thinking about communication.
In Art as Experience (1934), Dewey claims that “individualization” is the process
by which a work of art becomes unique. Moreover, Dewey says that the individuality ofartists punctuates “a mannerism” by opening up “a unique manner of acting in and witha world of objects and persons” (ION: 122; 121). Dewey emphasizes communication as
as well as the rise of Nazi Germany in “Creative Democracy” (Bernstein 2000: 216).
6
The concept of “culture” is one of the main concerns of Dewey’s later thought up until his last years. For example,
Dewey wanted to change the title of Experience and Nature (1925), which is one of the main works of his later
period, to Nature and Culture in 1951 (Dykhuizen 1973: 318).
The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

Dewey’s Resistance to Totalitarianism

5

mediated by works of art:
In the end, works of art are the only media of complete and unhindered
communication between man and man that can occur in a world full of gulfs andwalls that limit the community of experience. (AE: 110)
Dewey says that art emancipates individuality, and the communication mediated byart fosters social reform. The political power of art does not belong to “the personal
political intent of the artist” but to the creativity of art and its capacity for communication(AE: 347).
1-3. The Risk of Connecting the Theory of Esthetic Experience and Dewey’s
Political Thought
While his political thought deepened, Dewey published Art as Experience in 1934
based on a series of lectures in 1931. In this book, Dewey developed his conceptions ofart and esthetic experience. Although Dewey argued that art responded to current politicalsituations, as previously mentioned, few studies have discussed the relationship between
his political thought and his theory of esthetic experience. Recently, however, suchstudies have begun to appear.
M. Ueno (2010) discovers the relationship between Dewey’s political thought andtheory of esthetic experience by looking at the concept of communication and expanding
his discussion to the issue of the publicness of education. However, Ueno does not focus
on Dewey’s resistance to totalitarianism. Also, Ueno is not cognizant of how Dewey
makes it difficult to talk about a dimension of communication involving multiple actors
because Dewey’s theory of esthetic experience underpins personal and direct
experience.7
T.M. Alexander (1987) values the “immediate or qualitative meaning” ofexperience (Alexander 1987: 57), but he also discusses communication and community
as mediated by art. He says that “[t]o grasp the origin of art it is also necessary to grasp
the origin of the community of shared experience” (Alexander 1987: 189). Art can be themedia through which a community can share experiences. Therefore, for Alexander, art“unites the metaphysics and political aspect of Dewey’s philosophy” (Alexander 1987:
186). However, Alexander’s argument is not cognizant of Dewey’s thinking about
7

Such criticisms are pointed out in B. Croce (1948) and C. Pepper (1989).

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

6

K. NISHIMOTO

politics in the 1930s.
As previously mentioned, aesthetics, as non-rational, has the potential to puncture
purposive rationality. This is the reason for the recent attention given to Dewey’s
aesthetics.8 However, as Benjamin shows, aesthetics harbors the risk that it may bolster
a totalitarian regime. The connection between immediacy and mediacy in Dewey’s
theory of esthetic experience contains the risk that irrational and harmonious direct
experiences will be of absolute and uncritical value. In other words, there is the risk thatthe absolutization of immediate experience, working as the central dogma ofcommunication, has a high affinity with a totalitarian unity.9 Dewey also describes therisk of art being used as “propaganda for special views which are dogmatically asserted
to be socially necessary” (FC: 169). On the one hand, the non-rationality of art bears theconception of social reform, but on the other hand, it can pander to totalitarianism. Art isin an unstable position.
The problem with Dewey’s proposals for resisting totalitarianism through art is thatthey may vacillate between immediacy and mediacy. If immediacy and mediacy areseparate in the first place, Dewey’s trust that the creativity of art and communication will
break through “mannerism” should fail. Despite their connection, if immediate
experience becomes the absolute and central value of communication, the risk that it may
bolster a totalitarian regime is unavoidable. In the following, this study examines theconnection between mediacy and immediacy of the esthetic experience.
2. Dewey’s Theory of Esthetic Experience2-1. The Immediacy of Esthetic ExperienceAt first, this study shows a feature of the aspect of immediacy of esthetic experience.
According to Dewey, esthetic experience “is esthetic in the degree in which organismand environment cooperate to institute an experience in which the two are so fully
integrated that each disappears” (AE: 254; emphasis added). About “an experience,”
Dewey says:

8

For example, N. Saito focuses on Dewey’s “esthetic experience” to “release him from the framework ofconservative criticism such as instrumentalism, scientism, and optimism” (Saito 2009: 8).
9
For example, Imai criticizes Dewey’s concept of direct experience as defenseless against the politics of aesthetics
through the use of media that “penetrates the phase of pre-activity of self and incorporates certain tendencies ofperception” (Imai 2015: 34).
The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

Dewey’s Resistance to Totalitarianism

7[W]e have an experience when the material experienced runs its course tofulfillment. Then and then only is it integrated within and demarcated in thegeneral stream of experience from other experiences. […] Such an experienceis a whole and carries with it its own individualizing quality and self-sufficiency.
(AE: 42; emphasis in original)“An experience” has a specific “quality” and is fulfilled through the interaction
between an organism and its environment. In other words, “an experience” is a united
experience. In addition, a unique quality of "an experience” is that it is retrospective: “wesay in recalling them, “that was an experience’” (AE: 43; emphasis in original).
Dewey says that esthetic experience is based on “an experience,” but not all
experiences are esthetic.10 We have an esthetic experience when life becomes consciousof and realizes the “rhythm of loss of integration with environment and recovery of union”(AE: 20–21).11 Dewey says that this rhythm is experienced as a process of interaction.
Therefore, Dewey claims that the artist does not “shun moments of resistance and tension”(AE: 21).
There are three points that show the character of immediacy in esthetic experience.
(1) Esthetic experience arises from the activities of a living organism. (2) Esthetic
experience has its root in “an experience,” with the specific “quality” that we say of it
retrospectively that “it was an experience.” (3) Most importantly, for “an experience” tobecome an esthetic experience, there must be a “(re)union” within the interaction, in otherwords, within the rhythm of conflict and integration.
2-2. The Mediacy of Esthetic Experience
It is clear that esthetic experience is based on immediate experience. However, when
esthetic experience acquires a “form” as a work of art, therein lies the mediacy of esthetic
experience.12 In what follows, we will examine the aspect of the mediacy of esthetic
10

For example, in a study that illustrates the importance of discussing the differences between “an experience” and“esthetic experience,” M. Hayakawa writes, “an experience is just the primitive form of the esthetic experience, andit can only be called an esthetic experience when it has become more sophisticated and fulfilling through the works
of discrimination and reflection” (Hayakawa 1998: 99).
11
Dewey’s concept of direct experience was affected by W. James’ concept of “pure experience.” This is clear inExperience and Nature. Dewey says, “primary experience” (pure experience) is given as “vital modes” and “given
in an uncontrolled form” (EN: 21; 24). Dewey considers “secondary experience” to be as important as primaryexperience. Dewey says that the objects one attains in secondary experience as reflective experience “explain the
primary objects, they enable us to grasp them with understanding” (EN: 16; emphasis in original).
12
Dewey criticizes the dichotomy of form and matter and says that “form is always integral with matter” in works
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

8

K. NISHIMOTO

experience by describing the making and appreciation of works of art.
(1) Making
According to Dewey, an “impulsion” of an organism makes a work of art along withrhythmic interaction with a medium (AE: 66). Dewey says that “the expression of theself in and through a medium, constituting the work of art, is itself a prolonged interactionof something issuing from the self with objective conditions” (AE: 71; emphasis inoriginal).
Therefore, the activity of expression is not “the direct and immaculate issue” of thenatural impulse and tendencies of the artist (AE: 70), but is the creation of works of art
that generate the form in and through the medium.
In addition, “[t]he quality of a work of art is sui generis” because the interaction of
the artist and the environment occurs at each point in time (AE: 113; emphasis in original).
The work of art expresses esthetic experience as “an idiom that conveys what cannot be
said in another language and yet remain the same” (AE: 111). Dewey also says that “theself assimilates that material in a distinctive way to reissue it into the public world in aform that builds a new object” (AE: 112). Therefore, in making works of art, esthetic
experience, which implies a direct and nonlinguistic experience in and through a material,
becomes public by acquiring a distinctive form.
For Dewey, creating a new narrative from esthetic experience and throwing it backinto a public sphere is as vital as the beginning of esthetic experience, in which a “direct
and unreasonable impression comes first” (AE: 150).
(2) Appreciation
In the appreciation of works of art, esthetic experience arises within the interaction
between viewers and works of art. Dewey says that “[t]he esthetic or undergoing phaseof experience is receptive” and “involves surrender” (AE: 59). However, “[w]hen we are
only passive to a scene, it overwhelms us and, for lack of answering activity, we do not
perceive that which bears us down. We must summon energy and pitch it at a responsive
key in order to take in” (AE: 60; emphasis in original). In this way, perception andappreciation are trying to respond to works of art while being overwhelmed by them. In
other words, perception and appreciation are the activities in which the passive and active
are united. At that time, the past experience of viewers becomes their reference point.
According to Dewey, “in order to perceive esthetically, he [the perceiver] mustof art (AE: 315).
The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

Dewey’s Resistance to Totalitarianism

9

remark his past experience so that he can enter integrally into a new pattern” (AE: 143).
Viewers’ perception and appreciation recreate past experiences by working on objects
that overwhelm them (AE: 60). Then, when a viewer “exercises his individuality, a wayof seeing and feeling that in its interaction with old material creates something new,something previously not existing in experience” (AE: 113).
In appreciation, the creation of new experience is done through “criticism,” whichanalyzes and defines the direct impression given by works of art (AE: 308–309). In otherwords: “Criticism is a search for the properties of the object that may justify the direct
reaction” (AE: 312). Analysis and definition in criticism neither describe the feeling itself
nor explain or interpret works of art “on the basis of factors that are incidentally insidethem” (AE: 319). They mean to create a new experience and “[t]he critic, because of theelement of venture, reveals himself in his criticisms” (AE: 312).
To summarize the discussion of the making and appreciation of works of art, bothare based on esthetic experience as a direct experience. However, there is an aspect ofmediacy between the making and appreciation of works of art. This means that a workof art is a re-creation of the experiences of the artist that in turn recreate the viewers’ pastexperiences.
2-3. The Leap of Creative Intelligence
It is imagination that plays an essential role in the recreation of experience. Deweysays the “first intimations of wide and large redirections of desire and purpose are ofnecessity imaginative” (AE: 352) and “[o]nly imaginative vision elicits the possibilities
that are interwoven within the texture of the actual” (AE: 348). Imagination is the ability
to share experiences “far beyond the scope of the direct personal relationship” and is a
power of awareness to create a culture that previously did not exist (AE: 350).
Imagination “involves a dissolution of old objects and a forming of new ones in a medium”(EN: 171).
Also, Dewey calls the intelligence associated with imagination “creative
intelligence” (AE: 351). Dewey defines the work of intelligence in esthetic experience as
the “perception of [the] relationship between what is done and what is undergone” (AE:52). In the production of art, intelligence operates between what has already been
produced and what is to come next. In appreciation, intelligence operates between
accepting the work of art and criticizing it. Therefore, creative intelligence combines what
is done and what is undergone and brings out new possibilities from this combination. N.
Saito defines creative intelligence as “a mode of thinking while taking on the ‘accidental’
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

10

K. NISHIMOTO

in the unpredictability and uncertainty of life and speculating it forward” (Saito 2015: 56).
According to Saito, such intelligence depicts the “movement of the leap” within
uncertainty (Saito 2015: 65).
Dewey emphasizes that the first stage of esthetic experience is a feeling of “seizure”(AE: 150), an impact beyond understanding and language. “Not only, however, is it
impossible to prolong this stage of esthetic experience indefinitely, but it is not desirable
to do so” (AE: 150). The experience of “seizure” will have meaning for later criticalresponses.
The feeling of “seizure” is a momentary feeling. Responding to it and recreatingsuch experiences is reflective and requires time. Within that time, the immediacy of
esthetic experience moves to mediacy. This duality is neither disconnected nor
concentrically connected. Both are connected by a “leap” to the creation of unpredictable
new possibilities. That leap in both the making and appreciation of art depicts a different
movement than putting direct experience in an absolute and central position.
3. Esthetic Experience as Resistance to Totalitarianism
3-1. Totalitarianism and Art
How does this leap resist totalitarianism? To begin to answer this question we must
locate the place of art in Dewey’s argument against totalitarianism.
In Freedom and Culture, written in the same year as the conclusion of the German–
Soviet Nonaggression Pact (1939), Dewey wrote that “works of art […] are the mostcompelling of the means of communication by which emotions are stirred and opinions
formed” (FC: 70). However, a totalitarian regime controls the emotions of the masses
through works of art: “A totalitarian regime is committed to controlling the whole life of
all its subjects by its hold over feelings, desires, emotions, as well as opinions” (FC: 70).
Dewey argues that totalitarianism results from a simplification of theory, which itstates “in absolute terms” (FC: 116). According to Dewey, there are two types of suchtheories of absolutism. One is German idealism, especially the Hegelian simplification,
which was used to support the Nazis. The core of this thought is “found in its attempt tofind a ‘higher’ justification for individuality and freedom where the latter is merged withlaw and authority, which must be rational since they are manifestations of Absolute
Reason” (FC: 149; emphasis in original). The second is the Marxist simplification.
Dewey writes that Marxist simplification “combines the romantic idealism of earlier
social revolutionaries with what purports to be a thoroughly ‘objective’ scientific analysis,
The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

Dewey’s Resistance to Totalitarianism

11

expressed in formulation of a single all-embracing ‘law,’ a law which moreover sets forth
the proper method to be followed by the oppressed economic class in achieving its final
liberation” (FC: 119).
These two absolutized rational theories control human life including desires andemotions. Against them, Dewey argues that social events occur as the result of interaction
between individuals (who have desires and emotions) and external environmental factors.
He claims that within desire and emotion are “non-rational and anti-rational forces” (FC:162). For Dewey, art’s key role in the resistance to totalitarianism is to create new things
while accepting the non-rational and anti-rational aspects of human beings.
In addition, the problem of totalitarianism cannot be taken as the problem of Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union alone. Dewey found the risk of totalitarianism sprouting
in the division of individual activities within laissez-faire liberalism of the United Statesat that time. The problem derives from the loss of the emergence of individuality that
occurs through interaction with one’s environment, for which “[q]uantification,mechanization and standardization” were chiefly to blame [ION: 52].
Such problems cannot be overcome either by the denial of economic activity(national socialism) or by the control of people’s economic activity through national
intervention (national capitalism). 13 Instead, economic activity must be recaptured as anopportunity that enables the individualization of individuals and an opportunity for “thedevelopment of a shared culture” (ION: 57). To do that, it is necessary to liberatecollective intelligence through “the rise of the scientific method and technology” (LSA:
53). Dewey envisions democratic socialism as going beyond the division of individuals
brought about by economic individualism and seeks to foster individuality through thecreation of culture, rather than a totalization of America. The breakthrough that
democratic socialism might accomplish is founded on Dewey’s concept ofcommunication, which makes up the core of his thought.

3-2. Communication Mediated by Art
Communication goes beyond economic lubricants. According to Dewey, nonverbal
expressions such as “[g]estures and cries are not primarily expressive or communicative”(EN: 138–139). Moreover, “[l]anguage, signs and significance” as communicative things
13

Dewey criticized the New Deal. It represented an intensive model of government intervention in the market. Thus,
it seems, at first glance, to be in line with Dewey’s argument. However, Dewey points out that the New Deal is areaction to the Great Depression and evidence of “the growth of exacerbated Nationalism” (EBNS: 316).
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

12

K. NISHIMOTO“come into existence not only by intent and mind but by overflow, by-products, ingestures and sound” (EN: 139). Where do such “by-products” exist? Dewey states:
So too man’s posture and facial changes may indicate to other things which theman himself would like to conceal, so that he “gives himself away.”“Expression,” or signs, communication of meaning, exists in such cases for theobserver, not for the agent. (EN: 140)
In nonverbal expressions, the observer brings meaning to communication. 14
According to Dewey, verbal communication is also inherently impossible unless it isshared by the recipients.
For Dewey, nonverbal communication is the work of creating an expression, which
can only be transmitted and accepted as a nonverbal sensation, into a unique meaning.
All communication is inherently creative and indeterminate, verbal and nonverbal
communication alike. Therefore, no prior meaning has been established forcommunication. Instead, that uncertainty becomes a space for creation.
Especially in artistic expression, “[i]f the artist desires to communicate a special
message, he thereby tends to limit the expressiveness of his work to others” (AE: 110).
Rather, the “unexpected turn, something which the artist himself does not definitely
foresee, is a condition of the felicitous quality of a work of art” (AE: 144).
Artworks are offered to the recipient as open media and create unexpected meaning.
It is communication mediated by art for which Dewey argues.
3-3. Esthetic Experience Resisting Totalitarianism
Works of art as representations of the artist’s experience recreate viewers’ pastexperience, and they demonstrate their uniqueness through the mutual relationshipbetween the artist and the viewer. This is what communication through art means. In
addition, both production and appreciation include the chance of the leap resulting fromcreative intelligence.
This movement of the leap in the mutual relationship between making andappreciation bring about the reorganization of the activities of “quantification,
14

In Experience and Nature, Dewey discusses “meaning” as an overlap of “sense” and “signification” (EN: 200).
Sense is grasping a direct and sensory quality and “signification” is indicative meaning. This study cannot discuss
the multiplicity of Dewey’s semantics in detail, but it should be pointed out that “meaning” implies both immediacy
and mediacy, an important issue in his theory of esthetic experience as well.
The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

Dewey’s Resistance to Totalitarianism

13

mechanization and standardization” and repel the absolutization of theory. Here, thecontrast between art used to strengthen and maintain the existing political system andsocial order and art used to reorganize them is clear.
However, such a restructuring process does not rebuild the political system andsocial order from the ground up. For Dewey, seeking a fundamental reconstruction of thesocial order by means of a simplified theory means abandoning intelligence for“credulous faith in the Hegelian dialectic” (LSA: 60). The outcome of this would be theviolent creation of different governing structures. On the other hand, Dewey’s democraticsocialism, conceived from a perspective critical of totalitarianism, promotes a continuoustransformation of the political system and social order through the movement of the leap.
The driving forces for such transformations are communication via art and creative
intelligence, which suggests possibilities that previously did not exist. “The future isalways unpredictable” (ION: 122).
However, Dewey also said “that art itself is not secure under modern conditions”(AE: 347). To be able to secure the creative potential of art, “the material for art should
be drawn from all sources whatever and that the products of art should be accessible toall” (AE: 347). Art is not something that is praised as being placed on a “far-off pedestal,”such as is found in museums (AE: 12).
Dewey insisted that works of art are created out of “ordinary experience” (AE: 17).
According to him, the vital activity at the root of the aesthetic quality is ordinary
experience. However, as mentioned before, there is also the risk that everyday life may
be involved in totalitarianism through the dimensions of sense, desire, and emotion. The
theory of esthetic experience embraces life’s continuous transformation toward an
unknown future, hoping to foster opportunities for the leap in the interaction between life
and the environment, with the necessity of starting with the vitality.15
Conclusion
This study examined the theory of esthetic experience as a response tototalitarianism in Dewey’s works in the 1930s. First, this study confirmed that, in the
1930s, Dewey conceived of his notion of “democratic socialism” and signaled the15This argues against R. Rorty’s (1989) concept of the “liberal ironist” who distinguishes between the public andthe private. R. Shusterman (1997) advocates a “somaesthetics” based on Dewey’s theory of esthetic experience.
According to Shusterman, awareness of the physical senses and their control could be cultural-critical because it
results in both an adaptation to civilization and awareness of how power works on the body. Shusterman criticizes
Rorty for ignoring Dewey’s concept of experience, including esthetic experience. The issue with Rorty is that heneglects the political potentiality of action in a nonpolitical sphere.
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

14

K. NISHIMOTO

importance of culture in response to the circumstances of the time, including
totalitarianism. Also, it was pointed out that, although Dewey emphasized art as a part ofculture, art included a risk of working in harmony with totalitarianism.
Second, this study described how the theory of esthetic experience, while it was
based on immediate experience, included dimensions of both the mediacy and
immediacy of art by focusing on the making and appreciation of works of art. In addition,
between both dimensions of esthetic experience, there is the chance for the leap, a chancefor the creation of new possibilities. To show that, this study focused on the concept ofcreative intelligence included works of the imagination. Therefore, the theory of esthetic
experience and communication does not treat immediate experience as absolute andcentral.
Finally, this study clarified that, according to Dewey, the leap of esthetic experience,
which is based on vitality can be interpreted as a counter to totalitarianism’s
encompassing of life, including day-to-day life. The major focus of this study was theimportance of communication brought about by the mediacy of esthetic experience.
How does Dewey’s theory of esthetic experience connect with his educational
thought? In other words, how does it connect to the issue of “aesthetics and education?”
Focusing on the concept of creative intelligence, the educational significance of theesthetic experience is its capacity to create something that did not exist previously: “artbecomes the incomparable organ of instruction, but the way is so remote from that usuallyassociated with the idea of education, it is a way that lifts art so far above what we areaccustomed to think of as instruction, that we are repelled by any suggestion of teaching
and learning in connection with art” (AE: 349). This is resonant with two concepts
discussed in Experience and Education (1938): interaction and continuity.
In Experience and Education, Dewey shows the importance of interaction between
individuals and their environment and the continuous recreation of community througheducation by discussing “individual freedom and social control,” the overlapping themesof Dewey’s political thought (EE: 31). Based on the argument of this study, thisinteraction creates new possibilities, and the continuous recreation is uncertain because
nobody can tell the future perfectly. Dewey desired to protect the opportunity for social
reform by designing schools that could produce this kind of interaction and continuity.
The theory of esthetic experience is significant because it also aids in areconsideration of Dewey’s purposive rationality. However, the non-rationality of life in
opposition to the rationality of the absolutization of theory can easily lead to

The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

Dewey’s Resistance to Totalitarianism

15

totalitarianism, as long as it is a mere liberation of life.16 Against that, Dewey provided
conceptual tools for opposing totalitarianism in his discussion of creative intelligence,
which would find the possibility that previously not exist in non-rationality. Therefore,
the key to integrating his educational thought and his resistance to totalitarianism throughaesthetics lies in the concept of creative intelligence.
What follows from this is to consider the leap, through creative intelligence, as anode of the non-rational movement and as the intelligence of life. It will be necessary toconsider this in light of recent attention to Dewey’s concept of “life.”17

References
Works of John Dewey
1969–1991 The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1953, edited by Jo Ann Boydston.
Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.
Abbreviations
EN = Experience and Nature (1925 LW1)
ISR= Impressions of Soviet Russia (1928 LW3)
ION= Individualism, Old and New (1930 LW5)
AE = Art as Experience (1934 LW10)
LSA= Liberalism and Social Action (1935 LW11)
EE= Experience and Education (1938 LW13)
FC= Freedom and Culture (1939 LW13)
EBNS= “The Economic Basis of the New Society” (1939 LW13)
CD= “Creative Democracy: The Task Before Us” (1939 LW14)
Other Works
16

For example, S. Suzuki says, “thought based on the universalism of ‘life,’ for the most part, has a totalitarian
tendency and is easily connected to totalitarianism, which sacrifices individuals for the whole” (Suzuki 1995: 13).
17
Recently, a study of Dewey’s conceptualizations of life and the vital is being conducted, focusing on Taisho-ShinKyoiku (New Education in the Taisho Era). M. Hashimoto indicates the “possibility of the historical linkage between
Dewey’s concept of ‘life’ and Bergson’s concept of ‘la vie’” (Hashimoto 2013: 221). Also, S. Tanaka argues that
“Dewey’s thinking on education is based on the concept of ‘nature’ that tacitly leads to Christian ‘Agape,’” which is
inseparable from Dewey’s concept of “life” (Tanaka 2015: 36–37). Both of their suggestions reinterpret Dewey’s
thought from the viewpoint of vitalism.
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

16

K. NISHIMOTO

Alexander, Thomas. M. 1987 John Dewey’s Theory of Art, Experience, and Nature:
The Horizons of Feeling, Albany: State University of New York Press.
Benjamin, Walter. 1986 “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen
Reproduzierbarkeit”, Gesammelte Schriften VII･I, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp
Verlag. = 2008 “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological
Reproducibility: Second Version,” The Work of Art in the Age of Its
Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, Edited by
Jennings, Doherty, Levin, Translated by Jephcott, Livingstone, Eiland, andOthers, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard university Press, 19–55.
Bernstein, Richard. J. 2000 “Creative Democracy: The Task Still Before Us,” American
Journal of Theology & Philosophy, 21(3), 215–228.
Croce, Benedetto. 1948 “On the Aesthetics of Dewey,” Translated by Katherine
Gilbert, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 6(3), 203–207.
Dykhuizen, G. 1973 The Life and Mind of John Dewey, Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press.
Hashimoto, Miho. 2013 “Karikyuramu: Oikawa Heiji Kyōiku Shisō no Seimei Gainen”(Curriculum: Concept of Life in Heiji Oikawa’s Educational Thought), Kyōiku Shisōde Yomu Gendai Kyōiku (Reading Modern Education with the History of
Educational Thoughts), Tokyo: Keisōshobō, 202–224.
Hayakawa, Misao. 1998 “Amerika ni okeru Deyūi Tetsugaku Saihyōka no Dōkō(II):“Myakuraku Shugi” to “Keiken no Biteki Shitsu” wo ch ūshin ni” (Movements ofRevaluation of John Dewey’s Philosophy II: On “Contextualism” and “Esthetic
Quality of Experience”), Nagoyadaigaku Kyōiku Gakubu Kiyō, 36, 91–105.
Hook, Sydney. 1987 Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century, New York: Carroll& Graf.
Imai, Yasuo. 1998 Barutā Benyamin no Kyōiku Shisō: Medeia no naka no Kyōiku (Walter Benjamin’s Educational Thought: Education in Media), Yokohama:
Seorishobō.
----. 2015 Medeia, Bi, Kyōiku: Gendai Doitsu Kyōiku Shisō no Kokoromi (Media, theAesthetic, and Education: Essays on the History of Educational Thoughts inModern Germany), Tokyo: Tōkyōdaigakushuppankai.
Inoue, Hirotaka. 2008 Jon Deyūi to Amerka no Sekinin (John Dewey and America’s
Responsibility), Tokyo: Mokutakusha.
Morita, Hisato. 2004 ““Akai 30nendai” no Jon Deyūi: Riberarizumu to HanSutārinizumu no Aida” (John Dewey in the “Red Decade”: Between Liberalism and
The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

Dewey’s Resistance to Totalitarianism

17

Anti-Stalinism), Kyōiku Gaku Ronshū, 45, 97–115.
Nishimura, Takuo. 2010 ““Bi to Kyōiku” wa ikani ronji rareta ka ?” (How has the theme“the Aesthetic and Education” been discussed?), Kyōiku Shisō Shi komentāru, 97–
113.
Pepper, Stephen. C. 1989 “Some Questions on Dewey’s Esthetics,” The Philosophy ofJohn Dewey, 3rd ed., Edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, La Salle, Illinois: The
Open Court Publishing Co.
Rorty, Richard. 1989 Contingency, Irony, Solidarity, Cambridge; New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Saito Naoko. 2009 “Uchi naru Hikari” no Kyōiku: Puragumateizumu no Saikōchiku (TheGleam of Light: Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and Emerson),Tokyo: Hōseidaigakushuppankyoku.
----. 2015 “Kiwa ni Tatsu Puragumateizumu” (Pragmatism Standing on the Edge),
Gendaishisō, 43(11). 54–79.
Sato, Manabu. 2012 Gakkō Kaikaku no Tetsugaku (Philosophy for Renovating Schools),
Tokyo: Tōkyōdaigakushuppankai.
Shusterman, Richard. 1997 Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical
Life, New York and London: Routkedge.
Suzuki, Sadami. 1995 ““Taishō Seimeishugi” towa nani ka” (What is “Taisho Vaitalism”),
Taishō Seimeishugi to Gendai (Taisho Vaitalism and Modern), Tokyo:
Kawadeshobō, 2-15.
Suzuki, Shoko. 1999 “Shisō shi kenkyū to shite no Fuikushon: Bi to Kyōiku no Rendō ni miru
“Doitsu teki naru mono”“ (Fiction as a Method of the History of Ideas: The
Germanistics in the Context of Beauty and Education), Kindaikyōikufōramu, 8, 157–
165.
Tanaka, Satoshi. 2015 “Deyūi Kyōiku Shisō no Kiso: Shizen no Kōu Kanousei”(Communicability of Nature: Profondeur of Educational Thought of Dewey), Taishō
Shin Kyōiku no Shisō: Seimei no Yakudō (Philosophia of Taisho-Shin-Kyoiku: un
Véritable Élan de Vie), Tokyo: Toshindō, 34–61.
Ueno, Masamichi. 2010 Gakkōno Kōkyōsei to Minshushugi: Deyūi no Biteki KeikenRon e (The Publicness of Schools and Democracy: Toward John Dewey’s
Theory of Aesthetic Experience), Tokyo: Tōkyōdaigakushuppankai.
Westbrook, Robert. 1991 John Dewey and American Democracy, Ithaca, New York:
Cornell University Press.

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

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

The Concept of “Subject”
in the Philosophy of the Kyoto School:
Focusing on the Thinking of Motomori Kimura and Masaaki Kosaka
Mayumi YAMADA
Hokkaido University of Education
Abstract
This paper investigates the meaning of the word “subject” in the philosophy of the Kyoto School inorder to reconsider ideas about developing human beings. After the acceptance of so-called
postmodern thinking, we now face the difficulty of describing the universal aim of educating children.
Recent studies in pedagogy have tried to overcome the concept of an autonomous or independent
subject, by accepting Western thinking about “transcendence” and “otherness.” Against the backdropof this intellectual situation, this paper focuses on the thinking of three philosophers from the Kyoto
School: Kitaro Nishida, Motomori Kimura and Masaaki Kosaka, who discussed a lot of issues about
subjects and subjectivity in the 1930-40s. In today’s studies on pedagogy, while the thinking of Kimura
has contributed various potential ideas for overcoming modern concepts, the thinking of Kosaka has
been criticized for a long time because he acted as a chief editor of the report entitled “the Expected
Image of the Japanese.” Although they both discussed how education could cultivate subjectivity, few
studies have focused on this aspect. We examine the intellectual correlation between them, focusing
on their thoughts about cultivating subjects, in their words, the “world’s historical subject.” By
examining this concept, this article tries to suggest ways of considering the “subject” not as theabsolute aim of forming independent humanity, but as a particular way of existing with history andthe universe.
Keywords
Kyoto School, Subject, World History, Cultivating Individuals, “the Expected Image of the Japanese”

The Concept of “Subject” in the Philosophy of the Kyoto School

19

1. Introduction
1.1. The purpose of this paper
The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the concept of a “subject” in thephilosophy of education. Some might say this has already been done, because in recent
years the modern concept of subject has come under radical criticism. Various studies in
the field of education have tried to overcome this, as well as the conventional frameworks
of “education” or “human development,” especially following postmodern trends ofthinking, and we are now trying to create other ways of talking about education andhuman development (see Tanaka, 1999; Katayama 2009; Yano 2009). These studies have
tried to re-examine the goals of education by discussing them without looking at modern
concepts like development or autonomy, and instead focusing on new ideas, for example,“otherness” and “transcendence.” As Itani (2010) mentioned, we have lost a sense of thestrict aim of educating human beings, and we now feel the impossibility of making
universal images of what a “subject” is.
But on the other hand, as stated in the new “Basic Act on Education,” which wasamended in 2006, education still has the aim of “cultivating people who make up a nationand society.” Furthermore, the national curriculum guidelines or textbooks for education
always insist on the importance of subjectivity and the identity of children. In spite of thepostmodern thinking regarding pedagogical philosophy, people still commonly use theword “subject.” It is likely that talking about education as cultivating subjective
individuals is still binding us together.
Against the backdrop of this intellectual premise, this paper attempts to reconsider
the idea of the subject through the philosophy of the Kyoto School. After accepting
postmodern thinking, we need to face the difficulty of describing the universal ideal of
human beings, and how to deliver the aim of educating children. As mentioned above,
recent studies have tried to overcome the concept of autonomous subjects or the idea of
human development, through Western thinking regarding otherness and transcendence.
However, if you have paid attention to past discussions regarding the subject in Japanesephilosophy, you might know that we already have various ideas regarding that concept
which we use to overcome traditional ideas of education. In particular, Japanesephilosophers from the Kyoto School have discussed many issues about the subject sincethe 1930-1940s. Therefore, this article aims to figure out the meaning of the word “subject”
in the philosophy of the Kyoto School, and also to describe thinking as regards educationin terms of that concept.
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

20

M. YAMADA

1.2. The educational philosophy of the Kyoto School
In the post-war educational setting, the thinking of the Kyoto School has been
understood in connection with the famous report called “the Expected Image of theJapanese,” delivered by the Ministry of Education in 1966, because a central member ofthe school, Masaaki Kosaka, acted as chief editor of this report (Yamada, 2015). As the
document proposed an ideal image of man, once the plans were released, a lot of teachersand educators strongly criticized it. People were concerned about the huge politicalpressures from the government of the time.
It should be considered more carefully whether this document intended to impose
strict ideals on people or not. However, it is clear that the report tried to explore certain
perspectives of human beings as independent subjects. The document mentioned that
education entails activities that cultivate human beings to become “subjects,” and theMinistry of Education also said that “the Expected Image of the Japanese” tried todescribe what an independent subject meant in Japan at that time (Monbusho, 1966). As
mentioned above, we should focus on the fact that Kosaka, the chief editor of the
document, had exactly the same concerns about forming subjective individuals. As
referred to in recent studies, Kosaka cared about these issues of “subject” from the 1930s,
then again after World War II, his philosophical interest expanded into ways of cultivating
people who can develop themselves and wider society as well (Yamada, 2014).1
The observation that Kosaka made, arguing that education used the concept ofsubject, is now widely accepted. In his articles, the word “subject” does not refer to anindependent individual, and moreover, although he certainly wrote a document, “theExpected Image of the Japanese,” he did not believe that he could describe the absolute
image of human beings. He always considered a subject to be a “historical subject”
meaning people who can cultivate themselves continuously in relation to history, throughdialectic discussion of the world and history (see Yamada, 2014; Aoyagi, 2016). On thebasis of his theory about historical subjects, this paper additionally focuses on theintellectual relationship between Kosaka and two other philosophers belonging to the
Kyoto School, Kitaro Nishida and Motomori Kimura.
Contrary to criticism regarding Kosaka’s thinking, recent studies have actively
evaluated the philosophy of Nishida and Kimura, focusing on its potential to overcome
1

In the first year of being in the faculty of education at Kyoto University, Kosaka had a lecture entitled “The ideal
image of human beings for the Japanese of modern times.” (Kyoto University, 1957)
The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

The Concept of “Subject” in the Philosophy of the Kyoto School

21

traditional ideas about educating children. Yano (2013), for example, proposed a
substantial connection between the anthropology of the Kyoto School around the 1920s
and the early pedagogical situation in Japan. In addition, Tanaka (2012) suggested theterm, the “pedagogy of the Kyoto School” in order to promote further research about their
theory of education. According to Tanaka, “the pedagogy of the Kyoto School” hasargued about education in relation to the original concern regarding ideas of entirety andpure experience. And moreover, Onishi (1999) regards Kimura’s thinking regarding
education as worth re-discovering. He claims that the philosophy of Kimura is filled withpotential and originality that we should take in, and it can offer a significant alternative tothe post-war theory of education.
However, we should remember the fact that Kosaka has also been mentioned as animportant member of the Kyoto School, and this fact is now widely accepted. Why is thethinking of Kimura now evaluated for its potential, while the thinking of Kosaka has been
criticized for a long time? The serious problem is that few studies referring to theeducational thinking of the Kyoto School examine any intellectual connections between
the thinking of Kosaka and that of Nishida and Kimura, which are given opposite
evaluations by today’s pedagogical standards. How can we evaluate the thinking of the
Kyoto School, when we regard these three philosophers as having the same philosophicalideas of “the Kyoto School?” Therefore, in the following section, we examine theintellectual correlation between them, focusing on their thoughts regarding cultivating the“subject” and “subjectivity.”
In order to accomplish these issues, this paper investigates the meanings of “subject”
in the thinking of Nishida and Kimura in relation to Kosaka’s discussion which I havealready treated in other articles (Yamada, 2014; Yamada, 2015). Second, we focus on theidea of “history” in Kimura and Kosaka’s writings, because it is necessary to grasp theirthinking regarding “subject.” By these examinations, this study tries to suggest ways of
considering “subject” in educational theory, not as an absolute aim of forming
independent human beings, but as the particular ideals of each individual who maintains
inter-determination with the historical situations in which they live.
2. What does the “subject” mean in the philosophy of the Kyoto School?
2.1. The meaning of the individual in Nishida’s thinking
In this section, we investigate Nishida’s thinking regarding individuals, withreference to his two articles “Watashi no zettaimu no jikaku-teki gentei to iumono”
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

22

M. YAMADA[Theory about Self-consciousness and Nothingness] (1931), and “Watashi to sekai” [TheSelf and The World] (1933). First, we should focus on the fact that Nishida denies a wayof thinking about the self through an intellectual point of view.2 According to his theory,the self is never formed by an intellectual process such as cognition through rationality or
morality, rather it will just happen through an awareness and consciousness of a world ofnothingness surrounding all individuals.
In the article “Theory about Self-consciousness and Nothingness,” Nishida says thatwhen people truly have a consciousness, they are just seeing their own “self,” whichmeans they are just grasping things that don’t exist (Nishida, 1931). Self-consciousness
means that the universe which transcends the individual realizes the universe itself, in his
words, it means that “the place of the universe directly gives determinations to the place
itself.”“Our consciousness is nothing but the consciousness of the fact that people standin a particular place of their own. If people have consciousness through their ego, itcannot be the true meaning of consciousness. When you are released by yourintellectual self, and you determine yourself by just feeling the place and theuniverse without any intention, you, for the first time, can genuinely reach selfconsciousness” (Nishida, 1931, p.117).
It is crucially important that consciousness is not only the act of individuals, but also
the act of the universe, or “the place” itself, in Nishida’s thinking. Therefore, we should
now focus on his concept of place and understand when individuals become consciousof themselves. According to him, the bottom of the universe must be entire “nothingness,”
and moreover, individual and universal consciousness exists in this nothingness
simultaneously, during the process of self-consciousness.
In his philosophical essay, “The Self and The World,” Nishida also mentions about
individuals not having an independent existence, but they are inter-acting continuouslywith other existences (Nishida, 1933a). He considers that individuals can reach selfconsciousness, and determine themselves as “I,” only by realizing the nothingness of theuniverse and also recognizing that in themselves. He says:“When we think about such interaction between individuals, it should not beenough to assume just the interaction of existence itself. We must reach the concept
2

To help understand Nishida’s philosophy, I mainly refer to Kosaka (1971), Koyama (2007) and Itabashi (2008).

The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

The Concept of “Subject” in the Philosophy of the Kyoto School

23of the place which transcends our experiences and determines our whole existence
and the world itself. I notice the way of such interactions, because I believe in theimportance of determination carried out in the place itself…. We consider our world
as a determination itself, conducted by beings with each other, and only through theseinnumerable determinations, the world continues to determine itself infinitely”(Nishida, 1933a, p.109).
Through this view of inter-determination between the individual and the universe,
we can now understand his view on education. In his thinking, an individual cannot exist
as an individual without having an actual connection to the universe. He calls it “basho,
the place,” which covers the whole of existence in the world, and human beings can berecognized as individuals only in relation to the place and the self simultaneously.
Therefore, when he talks about education as cultivating human beings, he does notassume any absolute ideals to which every human being has to aspire to. Although one
cannot deny the fact that education is one of the main activities for bringing up children
to become self-determining individuals, in his thinking, there is no individual existence
without a connection to the social and historical world in which they live. Because we all
are standing in “the place” of the universe, education should form an essential way to not
only develop human beings but also the world itself.
In his article “Kyoiku-gaku ni tsuite” [About Education] (1933), Nishida describes
the idea of forming human beings as a process of circulation which the social andhistorical world determines dialectically. Therefore, according to him, the practice offorming people will only be accomplished when people see themselves in relation to theuniverse, and participate in the act of determining the world (Nishida, 1933b). As
mentioned above, an individual can never be considered without this inter-determinationof the world, in his thinking. Because each individual existing in this historical world isjust a factor of that, education is the means to make people realize the fact that they areparticipating in the formation of the universe itself. From such a point of view, Nishidasuggests the particular mission of the educator as not only helping in the formation ofhuman individuals, but also supporting the formation of the universe itself (Nishida,
1933b, p.92).
Based on his educational thinking about the individual and the universe, in thefollowing section, we examine the educational thinking of Kimura, focusing on his
famous theory of “hyogen-ai” meaning “the love of expression.”

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

24

M. YAMADA

2.2. The idea of the “expressive subject” in Kimura’s thinking
Various studies regarding his work “Hyogen-ai” [The Love of Expression],published in 1939, commonly insist that Kimura discusses an interactive relationshipbetween the inner and the outer, or subjective individuals and the world around them (seeOnishi, 2012). In Kimura’s thinking, the world is consistently structured by theinteraction between the subject having an idea and what is produced by the representationof that idea. He says that the significance of a subject is to determine the outside world
expressively, by hearing the voice of the universe and also by giving responses to theuniverse (Kimura, 1939, p.24). As well as Kosaka’s discussion of “gyaku-gentei,”meaning inter-determination, Kimura also considers the interaction between the
representation of individuals and the actual world they live in.
However, on the other hand, this representation of the subject is considered not justas an interaction with one’s surroundings, but also as a determination of the greater
universe which transcends both the subject and the world, in Kimura’s discussion. He
says:“The idea of expression seen through personal experience, at the time one islooking inward, is not organized by the mere self-determination of that person, butsprings from an abyss of the expressive universe itself, which transcends every
existence in the world and also envelops all subjects and objects that dialecticallyconflict in this world” (Kimura, 1939, p.31).
In his thinking, the inter-determination between the subject and the object plays asubstantial part in the formation of the world, in addition to the thinking of Kosaka.
However, in addition, Kimura assumes a greater expression of the universe which relates
to the real world we live in. That is to say, he describes the world in the following twophases: one is the historical world formed by the inter-action of both living existence andnature, and the other is the expressive universe springing from the more dialectical
relation between the historical world and the great will of lives that embrace the whole ofthe historical world itself.
In his consideration described above, we can find a strong similarity with Nishida’s
thinking regarding the view of the dialectical expression of the universe itself. According
to Kimura, the entire existence in this world is consistently expressing the great will of
the universe; he calls it “the idea of the expressive world,” and by this act of expression,
we, the existence, can participate in the great movement of this natural and historical
The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

The Concept of “Subject” in the Philosophy of the Kyoto School

25

world’s inter-determination (Kimura, 1939, p.31). He says “human individuals are,therefore, the beings that have the great mission of forming the expressive universe itself
consciously, even though they exist inside the universe which continues its selfexpression eternally” (Kimura, 1939, p.57).
From the above discussion, we can now suggest the intellectual peculiarity that
Kimura shared with the Kyoto School, especially Nishida and Kosaka. The point is that
Kimura considered human beings as inter-determining subjects who express their inward
desire constantly against their surroundings, i.e. the natural and historical world. This issimilar to Kosaka’s thinking about the substratum of the history and the world (seeYamada, 2014). Furthermore, this inter-contradiction of subject and environment iscomposed by an expression of the greater universe; this is clearly analogous with thethinking of Nishida, discussed in the previous section. That is to say, in Kimura’s thinking,whereas an individual always has to be the subject of expression which continues topresent their innate will against the objective world, that expression of the subject is, infact, a self-determination of the great universe, which transcends all existences. It
transcends the whole of our historical world itself.
Therefore, in his thinking on education, even though Kimura defines the act ofeducation as cultivating human beings as subjective individuals, it is clear that he neverassumes any autonomous subjects which seem to be completely independent of theirsurroundings, just like the philosophy of Nishida (Kimura, 1941). Because he describes
the subject as simply “the place for self-determination of the expressive universe,”
individuals should be merely elements of the social and historical world which iscomposed dialectically by the more dynamic universe.
Kimura says that education must be the act of the subject becoming a subjective
individual in the concrete historical world, and he also strongly insists that developing
subjectivity should make people realize that the voice of the universe transcends us, andunderstand the ideas coming from the contradictory world and its history (Kimura, 1941,p.45). That is why Kimura repeatedly says that education is the activity of contributing to
the self-determination of the universe, by contributing to the cultivation of human beings
as nothing but the subject of the universe’s expression (Kimura, 1941, p.51).
2.3. The concept of “subject” in the educational thinking of the Kyoto School
It has been shown how Nishida and Kimura argued about the point of education, incomparing them with the thinking of Kosaka. We can suggest some remarkable points intheir thinking as follows:
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

26

M. YAMADAFirst is the fact that they consider the subject as a being, expressing itself all the timeagainst the universe, not as a being who is closed away or fastened by any absolute means.
In their thinking, a being can exist as a subject only by hearing the voice of the universe
and responding to it, and this interaction between subject and universe determines boththe subject and the universe simultaneously. The second point is that they talk about the
subject in terms of individuals who are not totally independent from the context of theworld and history. Beings always exist in the greater universe of expression, and therelationship with the universe is essential and fundamental for them to be a subject. And
the last point we can suggest is that, in their thinking regarding education, they discussed
the act of education as not merely bringing up each child or person to be an independent
individual, but rather as cultivating a human being that is able to act as one of the elementsof the formation of the great universe itself. For them, education is, in particular, a wayof forming the universe and history through the effort to form people as subjects who candevelop and organize world history.
Now we can give some answers to the first question we proposed at the beginningof this study. That is to say, the concept of “subject” suggested by the Kyoto School is
nothing but the individual having a concrete relationship with the universe whichenvelops the whole of existence in the historical world transcendently. Therefore, when
they describe education as the act of forming a subject, the subject does not mean
someone completely independent or autonomous, and they never assume anything like“absolute ideals” of human beings. The continuous inter-determination between subject
and universe was the most substantial part of their philosophy. Thus, in order tounderstand their thinking in more detail, we should examine the idea of the universe
which expresses itself as a historical world.
As mentioned repeatedly, in their thinking, the inter-determinative universe canappear as nothing but the historical world, so the concept of the “world’s history” has
crucial meanings for their consideration of “subject.” Therefore, in the following section,
we investigate the meaning of world history, which the Kyoto School, as Kimura andKosaka argued about frequently in the 1930s and developed during the war as the theoryof so-called “Sekai-shi no tetsu-gaku, [the philosophy of world history].” What does
world history mean in their philosophical thinking, and why do they have to focus on it
when developing their thinking regarding “subject?”
3. The concept of history in the thinking of the Kyoto School
3.1. What does “world history” mean in Kosaka’s thinking?
The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

The Concept of “Subject” in the Philosophy of the Kyoto School

27

Because of his consideration of world history during the war, Kosaka seemed tostand at the right side of the Kyoto School for a long time after the war, as mentioned
at the beginning of this study. The most substantial work which gave such an evaluation
was the article summarizing symposiums “Sekaishi-teki tachiba to nihon” [The World’s
Historical Position and Japan], which appeared in a popular magazine “Chuo Ko-ron”
from 1942 to 1943 (published as Kosaka, 1943). This series of symposiums was heldamong four philosophers, Iwao Koyama, Keiji Nishitani, Shigetaka Suzuki and Kosaka,
who were all colleagues at Kyoto Imperial University. The aim of this meeting, Kosaka
said, was to search for the direction that Japan should take in the context of the world war,and suggest how Japan could overcome the situation (Kosaka, 1943).
However, in order to understand his concept of subjectivity, we examine the topic,
not using this symposium, but the article “Sekaishi-kan no ruikei” [The Type of theWorld’s Historical Viewpoint], written by Kosaka alone and published in 1944, because
the discussion regarding the symposium was too affected by the reality of Japan’ssituation in order to fully understand his philosophical thinking on that concept (seeSugimoto, 2008). Then, let us investigate his philosophical considerations regarding
world history.
In the article, he conclusively defines it as “the history of human beings, struggling
and trying to solve various problems of the world,” or “the continuous effort of doing it.”He begins his discussion by criticizing the traditional understanding of world history,
which does not give enough significance to individuals (Kosaka, 1944, p.94). According
to him, the traditional thinking of historical philosophy has regarded human individuals
not as truly independent subjects of the world, but as beings bound tightly to land andtradition, or simply beings handled by the absolute will of something, as Hegel proposed.
Against this tendency, he proposed a different view of historical individuals byemphasizing the crucial meaning of human effort in resolving the world’s historicalproblems. And moreover, we should focus on his emphasis of the significance of human
irrationality in forming the rationality of world history.
According to Kosaka, a human being is not just an irrational existence, but anindividual who can rationalize himself or herself consistently by placing themselves inparticular relationships with the world and history. He says: “It is not rationality formedby subsuming the individual into the rationalized universe, but the historical symbol ofrationality formed by subsuming the universe into individuality and specificity, that is tosay, the rationality formed through the individual’s recognition and acceptance for theparticularity of the universe, on the contrary” (Kosaka, 1944, pp.94-95). Human beings
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

28

M. YAMADA

should realize their subjectivity which makes them rational and practical by placing themin the objective world and history, and on the other hand, this realization of being a subject
also can rationalize the universe itself and determine it as a particular historical universe.
He also says “the universe can determine itself as a universe only through the act of beinga subject, and the subject can realize itself as a subject only through deconstructing andconstructing the universe historically” (Kosaka, 1944, pp.96-97).
“Without continuous construction, the historical world has to be completely
frozen, and on the other hand, the subjective individual has no choice but to get lostin its meaning and disappear into the great universe. Only historical transcendence
can truly develop the world, and in fact, there is some kind of dynamism and great
energy in the historical universe for morality and rationality. Therefore, the historyof the world can remain a particular symbol of the destiny of human existence, andit may hold a particular symbolism regarding the fate of human individuals.”(Kosaka, 1944, p.97)
From the above discussion, we can now understand the meaning of world history interms of Kosaka’s philosophical thinking. As seen in the philosophy of Nishida, Kosaka
maintained the continuous inter-determination between the individual and the universe
as well, and he said that world history is continuously formulated through this interdetermination. This means that the history Kosaka considered does not seem to imply
any power of something resembling absolute oneness. The fundamental root of world
history has to be the continuous movement of the world itself, and everlasting action andpractice done by both subject and object simultaneously. In his thinking, it might beconsidered as absolute nothingness, which is the concept the Kyoto School commonly
proposed and developed. Only particular acts of each individual can transform the world
and its history, as Kosaka maintained.
3.2. What does “world history” mean in Kimura’s thinking?
In previous studies, little is known about the fact that Kimura has treated the issueof world history, especially during the war. 3 Compared to the case of Kosaka, it iscertainly true that Kimura does not seem to approve of any direct action in terms of Japan
pushing forward with the world war, but in fact, in one of his remarkable works, “Kokka
3

Many studies admit the fact, but they seem to avoid discussing it in detail (e. g. Murase, 2001).

The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

The Concept of “Subject” in the Philosophy of the Kyoto School

29

ni okeru bunka to kyoiku” [Culture and Education of the Nation],” published in 1947,
we can for sure find his serious effort to establish a theory named the “love of expression
for world history,” as well as the other Kyoto School members. So, in this section, we try
to investigate his theory about world history using his book “Culture and Education of
the Nation,” in order to reveal why Kimura did focus on the problem of history inreaching his deeper philosophy called the “love of expression.”Firstly, we should focus on his reflections regarding his previous work, as stated in
the book. According to him, his previous writing about expression does not have enoughperspective for species lying between individual and universal. He says: “If we fail tonotice the importance of various species necessarily lying between individual anduniversal, or if we believe the direct connection of the two, we grasp only the abstractside of the relation between subject and universe” (Kimura, 1947, p.208). Human beings
are all living with certain facts of historical reality, and they are not living in a place devoidof concreteness or specificity of the world and history. In particular, this specificity should
encompass the fact of nationality, Kimura says. To consider a subject of expression
concretely, it is necessary to take into consideration the nationality of an individual, whichis the most substantial one of any concept of species, and because of this observation,
conceiving the issue of world history should become unavoidable for him.
Then, what does world history mean according to Kimura? In conclusion, theessential concept of mediation was to not allow particular nations to get absoluteindependence. He says “nationality gains its individuality only when it exists inside a
relationship between other nationalities. If they fail to achieve the concept ofintermediation, they cannot exist as particular nations” (Kimura, 1947, p.213). He calls it
the “world’s historical universality,” which involves both the concepts of time and space.
In his theory, world history does not mean any historical reality of the world we live in.
It is rather the idea of universality which makes nationalities exist as subjective nationsof the world and of history, and also develops them as particular “world historical nations.”
Kimura also says that the idea of world history is, in fact, coming from the concept
about the place of nothingness which Nishida examined. People can form a particularnation only when they realize the absolute nothingness of history and the universe, andmoreover, understanding their own nothingness is the only way for each nation to achieve
individuality in world history. He says “the meaning of world history is a principle ofnegation functioning between nationalities and species, and because it is just a function
without any concrete formation, we should call it just ‘the nothingness’ as an eternal anduniversal movement” (Kimura, 1947, p.226). As previously mentioned, in Kimura’s
thinking, world history means not the concrete phenomenon of history, but the concepts
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

30

M. YAMADA

of nothingness and universality which keep the world moving and negotiating infinitely.
3.3. Dynamism between history and subject
In this section, we examine the concept of “world history” in the philosophy of
Kosaka and Kimura, focusing on whether they assume absolute canon or not, whichbinds and restricts individuals transcendently. The facts we found are twofold: first, in
Kosaka’s thinking, human individuals were given a significant role in the formation ofworld history, and indeed human irrationality played a substantial part in its construction.
He considered world history not as the development of a great rationality, like in Hegel’s
philosophy, but as the continuous effort and practice of human beings to live in the realityof history and the universe.
Second, we understand how Kimura discussed world history. From his point of view,
world history means not concrete facts and the reality of the historical world, but afundamental concept of individuality and the subjectivity of nations and species. Only
when realizing the concept of world history can human beings gain a particularity andspecificity, and all nationalities can exist as “individual nations.” As the principle ofhistory is nothing but the will of movements, it is never fastened by anything.
Therefore, it is clear that they do not assume any principle which operates theuniverse and the individual transcendently. The fundamental point of history is, in fact,nothingness which envelops everything and enfolds every existence in the world. In theirphilosophical thinking, subject and history determine each other in a field of nothingness,and this infinite inter-determination is the only way to construct both subject and history.
That is why they consider educating human beings as not only civilizing individuals, but
cultivating history and the world as well.
However, we should also indicate unexpected problems that their theory of“nothingness” encounters. Firstly, looking at Kimura’s thinking, the notion of “koku-tai,”which means the imperial system of the Japanese, has serious incoherencies. As
mentioned above, Kimura considered world history as a universal principle to mediate
negotiations between all nations and species living in the world in real-life situations.
Therefore, in his discussion, a distinction between both aspects of history, one where we
practically live, and the other where we realize the universe as a medium, is completely
unclear. Because of this obscurity, all beings existing in the world are directly accepted
as the “world’s historical subjects” and are fundamentally aware of their morality andprinciples (Kimura, 1947, p.293). That is to say, he failed to make clear the connection
between the reality and the concept of “world history”. It causes a more serious problem
The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

The Concept of “Subject” in the Philosophy of the Kyoto School

31

regarding the theory of “koku-tai,” especially because of the particular situation of Japan
during the war.
In his work, “Culture and Education of the Nation” published in 1947, Kimura
admitted fundamental absoluteness in a praxis of construction to build nations, and hesaid that Japanese “koku-tai” is “the absolute root of whole national activity,” “thecreative springs of our development,” and also “the eternal absolute canon of ourcomplete livingness” (Kimura, 1947, p.298). Although he considered “nothingness” as
the root of the universe, he eventually saw it in the historical supremeness of Japanese“koku-tai.” Because it is difficult to find a border between reality and notions, we cannot
clearly understand what “koku-tai” is. It must be assessed as the commendation ofnationality. Hereafter, we should investigate why he had to refer to this uncertain andimplicit concept in more detail.
Second, we point out the problem in Kosaka’s discussion. According to him, themost substantial issue for each individual was admitting the way in which they recognize
the world historical situation and problems, and how they practically struggle with theseissues. However, we should note that the idea of “individual” that he espoused was notmeant to denote separate individuals, but a particular group of ethnicities. It is ethnicity
connected by not only land or blood but also of the same nationality and forming thesame nation. He says “an individual without awareness of ethnicity can never be a
subjective individual of history, and without the awareness of forming a nationality,
people can never reach the profound dynamism of the historical universe” (Kosaka, 1944,p.95).
The beginning of his discussion about history and subjectivity certainly made aneffort to find the innate role of human individuals in world history, but at the same time,
he required that individuals must be aware of themselves as members of a particularethnic force which organizes and composes specific nations. In his thinking, people canconduct themselves as “subjects” only when they recognize their traditional spirit of placeand blood ties, and also have a consciousness of their national and cultural situation. His
thinking regarding ethnic subjectivity more or less resulted in the modern theory of thestate and the usual assertions of nationalism, which he had tried to overcome.
As Furuta (1965) criticized Nishida’s philosophy, both Kimura and Kosaka
discussed their historical philosophy insisting on the practical situation of their own lives
as Japanese. Their thinking could not reach a position of anti-nationalism and it did nothave any power to deny and overcome the idea of nation and ethnicity. Although the rootof their thinking was the concept of nothingness, they seemed to accept the crucial
meaning of “koku-tai” and the ethnicity of Japan forming a nation. In order to investigate
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

32

M. YAMADA

the limits of their thinking more specifically, we must examine the concept of “formation,”
which they referred to as an act of inter-determination. We should investigate carefully
how subject and object recognize each other, through the act of so-called “formation.”In the previous paragraph, we indicated Kimura’s confusion between reality and thetheory of history; the notion of “formation” holds a key to solving this problem. In orderto make clear the whole thinking of the Kyoto School, especially the idea of nothingness,
we must understand the relation between subject and universe, and the relation between
the two aspects of human activity, recognizing nothingness and participating in theformation of world history. Based on the discussion this paper has proposed, from now
on, we should continue to study their thinking by focusing on the notion of formation.
4. Analysis and Conclusion
This paper attempted to analyze the meaning of “subject” in the educational thinkingof the Kyoto School. Although they treated education as cultivating subjectivity, few
studies have focused on that fact until today. In conclusion, they considered a subject as
an individual who continuously negotiates with the dynamic movement of history andthe universe and never stops working even if he realizes the nothingness of the world andthe self. Kosaka said that all human beings should take responsibility for awakening theirown historical subjectivity and should also struggle against the subject as a subjective
individual. Their philosophical idea of nothingness requires all people to keep
considering, practicing and expressing permanently, because the world of their thinking
expresses itself as nothing but the historical world.
That could be the reason why Kimura sought the ideal image of a world historicalnation, and on the other hand, Kosaka attempted to analyze types of human beings
historically through the document called “The Expected Image of the Japanese” (seeKosaka, 1966). For them, it was not a fallacy or surrender of their philosophy, rather apositive way of discovering their thinking more concretely. They took heavy
responsibilities for their act of defining the world’s historical subject, in the turbulent
situation of Japan at the time. Their philosophy of nothingness invites all human beings
to continuously seek nothingness.
This study looked at today’s unclear connection between the pedagogy which tries
to overcome using the concept of subject, and the actual situation of educating children,which emphasizes the importance of cultivating subjectivity. Through the thinking of the
Kyoto School, this paper suggests an alternative discussion of today’s situation, and alsosuggests a framework to discuss this problem.
The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

The Concept of “Subject” in the Philosophy of the Kyoto School

33

Until today, few studies have noticed the importance of the discussion regarding
dialectical relations, in their words, inter-determinative relations between reality andtheory. This does not concern the relation between the method of educating children andthe actual activity of educating in schools, which has been of substantial concern for along time. What we need to consider now is the fundamental understanding regarding
our praxis of educating human beings, and on the other hand, the actual realization about
the historical moment where we stand. As the Kyoto School proposed, we have to give a
historical place to our theory of educating children, because the act of education shouldbe the development of the universe’s history through cultivating human beings.
Nishida insists that pedagogy must above all choose historical philosophy as its
foundation. We have to understand the inconsistent connection between seeking theprinciple of education and responding to various requirements from historical reality. The
most substantial work we have to try to accomplish is to analyze the historical situation
we are living in, and in addition, to again question the role of “educating” based on its
historical analysis. Our study contributes a small step to this continuous search, as a
dedication to the Kyoto School.

References
Aoyagi, H. (2016). Sengo kyoiku gaku no naka no marukusu-shugi (Marxism in “Postwar pedagogy”: The concept of “subject” in Tokumitsu Yagawa and Masaaki
Kosaka), Forum on modern education no.25. History of educational thoughtsociety.
Furuta, H. (1956). Nihon-teki kannen-ron tetsugaku no seiritsu (The Beginning of
Idealism in Japan’s philosophy), In Toyama, S (Eds.), Kindai nihon sisoushi(History of modern thinking in Japan). Tokyo: Aoki shoten.
Itabashi, Y. (2008). Rekishi-teki genjitsu to Nishida tetsugaku (The historical reality andNishida’s philosophy). Tokyo: Hosei university press.
Itani, N. (2010). Shutaisei no chokoku ha utsutsu ka yume ka (Can we go beyond thesubjectivity through education?: Educational thoughts confronted with modern“Insomnia”), Forum on Modern Education no.19. History of educational thoughtsociety.
Japan Monbu-sho. (1966). Monbu jiho (The journal of the ministry) no. 1072. Tokyo:
Monbu-sho.
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

34

M. YAMADA

Katayama, K. (2009). Kyoiku gainen ha kyoiku tetsugaku-kai de donoyo ni ronjirarete
kitaka (How has the conception of education been discussed in academic
conference of educational philosophy?), Studies in the philosophy of education no.
100, special issue. Philosophy of Education Society of Japan.
Kimura, M. (1941). Kyoiku no honshitsu to bunka no honshitsu (The principle ofeducation and culture), In Keisei-teki jikaku (Consciousness of formation). Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten.
Kimura, M. (1947). Kokka ni okeru bunka to kyoiku (The culture and education of thenation). Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.
Kimura, M. (1997). Hyogen-ai (The love of expression). Tokyo: Kobushi shobo.
Kosaka, M. & Koyama, I. & Nishitani,K. & Suzuki, S. (1943). Sekaishi teki tachiba tonihon (The world’s historical position and Japan). Tokyo: Chuo-koron sha.
Kosaka, M. (1944). Sekaishi-kan no ruikei (The type of the world’s historical viewpoint),
In Nishida, K (Ed.) (2000). Sekaishi no riron (The theory of world history). Kyoto:
Toei sha.
Kosaka, M. (1966). Shiken kitai-sareru ningen-zo (The expected image of Japanese).
Tokyo: Riso sha.
Kosaka, M. (1971). Nishida Kitaro sensei no shogai to shiso (The life and philosophy ofKitaro Nishida). Tokyo: Sobun sha.
Koyama, I. (2007). Koyama Iwao chosaku-shu (The collected works of Iwao Koyama)
vol. 1. Tokyo: Tamagawa university press.
Kyoto University. (1957). Kyoto daigaku kyoiku gakubu kiyo III (The jounal of Kyoto
university, faculty of education III). Kyoto: Kyoto university.
Murase, Y. (2001). Kimura Motomori no tetsugaku (The philosophy of Motomori
Kimura). Tokyo: Kobushi shobo.
Nishida, K. (1931). Watashi no zettaimu no jikaku-teki gentei to iumono (The theory
about self-consciousness and nothingness), The collected works of Kitaro Nishidavol. 6. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.
Nishida, K. (1933a). Watashi to sekai (The self and the world), The collected works ofKitaro Nishida vol. 7. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.
Nishida, K. (1933b). Kyoiku-gaku ni tsuite (About education), The collected works ofKitaro Nishida vol. 12. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.
Onishi, M. (1999). Kimura Motomori. In Sumeragi, N. & Yano, S. (Eds.), Nihon no
kyoiku-ningen-gaku (The pedagogical anthropolpgy in Japan). Tokyo: Tamagawa
university press.
Onishi, M. (2011). Hyogen teki seimei no kyoiku tetsugaku (The pedagogical philosophy
The 4th Research Promotion Award Article (2018)

The Concept of “Subject” in the Philosophy of the Kyoto School

35

of expressive life). Kyoto: Showa do.
Tanaka, S. (1999). Kyoiku no kaidoku (Decoding the education). Kanagawa: Seori shobo.
Tanaka, T. (2012). Rinsho teki ningen keisei-ron no kochiku (The construction of clinicaltheory for forming human beings). Tokyo: Toshin do.
Sugimoto, K. (2013). Nishida tetsugaku to rekishi-teki sekai (The world’s history and thephilosophy of Nishida). Kyoto: Kyoto university press.
Yamada, M. (2014). Kosaka Masaaki no kyoiku-shiso ni okeru shutai gainen (Theconcept of subject in educational thought of Masaaki Kosaka), Studies in thephilosophy of education no. 109. Philosophy of Education Society of Japan.
Yamada, M. (2015). Sengo kyoikugaku ni okeru “Kyoto gakuha” (What does “Kyoto
school” mean for the postwar pedagogical situation?), Studies in sociology,
psychology and education: Inquiries into humans and societies no. 80. Tokyo:
Keio university.
Yano, S. (2009). Futto suru kyoiku-ningengaku he no sasoi (Invitation for thePedagogical Anthropology), Studies in the philosophy of education no. 100,
special issue. Philosophy of Education Society of Japan.
Yano, S. (2013). Ningen gaku: Kyoto gakuha ningengaku to kyoikugaku no ushinawareta
wa wo motomete (Anthropology: Seeking the missed connection between
anthropology of Kyoto School and pedagogy), In Morita, H, & Morita, N (Eds.),
Kyoiku shiso-shi de yomu gendai kyoiku (Reading modern education through thehistory of pedagogical thinking). Tokyo: Keiso shobo.

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

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

Education Without Consideration of Human Inquiry:
Flaws in Arguments on Competencies
Ryohei MATSUSHITA
Mukogawa Women’s University
Abstract
Since the end of the twentieth century in many countries around the world, education has sought tofoster competencies, including those referred to by the MEXT in Japan as “the three pillars of qualities
and abilities.” This presentation will indicate some serious flaws inherent in the usual arguments oncompetencies. At the heart of my presentation are the questions: where and in what way docompetencies exist? How can they be learned? Current mainstream educational theory and practice isbased on frameworks such as “thinking consists of knowledge, skills, and character,” or “learning is
divided into passive learning and active learning.” What I attempt here, however, is to present anotherview on thinking, inquiry, and learning in a way that follows a new scientific-philosophical trend,
which has an affinity with the ontology or knowledge theory of phenomenology, hermeneutics, andpragmatism. Based on the view that criticizes the reductionist idea that considers knowing andthinking to be the inner workings of the mind and brain, and claims the idea to recognize action,
perception, and thinking as one continuous whole, education, which seeks to foster competencies
without taking into account the inherent character of human inquiry, may have serious limitations anddeficiencies.
Keywords
Competencies, Inquiry, Leaning, Pathos (Passion), Preunderstanding

Introduction
In a globalizing society, the future is everywhere increasingly unforeseeable,
uncertain, and complicated. It is expected that labor, which a knowledge-based economy
needs and AI (artificial intelligence) cannot defeat, will be required further and that
unknown social problems will arise one after another from now on. Responding to such

Education Without Consideration of Human Inquiry

37

near-future situations in a rapidly changing world is forcing the vision and principles of
education to be revised. In Japan, education aims to foster competencies referred to by
the MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) as “thethree pillars of qualities and abilities (Shishitsu / Nōryoku)’’: “working ‘knowledge andskills’,’’ “ability to think / make decisions / express oneself and so on,” and “ability geared
toward learning / human nature.” Furthermore, the way to achieve such aims of education
is called “proactive, interactive, and deep learning.” It goes without saying that since theend of the twentieth century, educational policies to foster competencies have been
introduced in countries around the world, including Japan.
There is some room for doubt in such education; for example, there is the possibilityof placing an excessive burden and hardship on the individual. Although, we admit herethat in the future people who can manage and solve unknown problems will be needed
more than ever before. However, even if we recognize the need for education to placehigh importance on inquiry, creation, dialog, collaboration, and knowledge, we cannot
but say that arguments regarding competencies such as “qualities and abilities” have
many serious flaws. In this presentation I focus on the issues considered to be the mostessential among such flaws and, in particular, those related to philosophical arguments.
1. Competencies and Learning as Global Standard
At the heart of my presentation are the questions: where and in what way do the“qualities and abilities” of competencies exist? How can they be learned? Researches to
elucidate the characteristics of human ability, thinking, knowing, and learning haverecently been advanced by cognitive science, psychology, brain science, robotics, biology,
anthropology, etc. And philosophy also plays an important role in advancing thoseresearches. However, as the researches have just begun and are only now in progress,
there are many issues still in the midst of controversies. Reflecting on the restrictions
which stem from these controversies, it appears that arguments on educational policies at
a global level are trying to incorporate only the minimal flame of the most common
achievements of these researches, but this seemingly neutral stance can cause serious
problems.
The frameworks of competencies proposed by the OECD, etc., on which arguments
on “qualities and abilities” are based, consist of the components of human abilities andcharacter considered necessary for achieving the goals demanded by a future society.
Those components are usually divided into three parts such as “knowledge, skills, andcharacter,” or “knowledge, (cognitive and social emotional) skills, and attitudes andE-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

38

R. MATSUSHITA

values,” whose parts roughly correspond to each of “the three pillars of ‘qualities andabilities’.’’ Moreover, each component is divided into subcomponents, including
communication skills, creativity, collaboration, metacognitive skills, resilience, and so on.
Thus, in the “OECD 2030 Framework,” competencies are regarded as the whole of theinteraction or the interrelationship between these components (although how thesecomponents or subcomponents are to be understood depends on each responsible agentof education). What is knowledge or character? What kinds of communication skills are
required? These are open questions for each responsible agent of education or educational
practitioner. At the same time, it is assumed that a better practice will be discovered andtheory will be revised when we challenge new practices based on a certain learning theory
and verify whether they succeed or not based on evidence.
Next, thinking is supposed to be a manipulation of symbols using certain skills,
accompanied by ideas of two-step learning consisting of both passive learning(acceptance of knowledge) and active learning (utilization and creation of knowledge),
which are based on the dichotomy between knowledge and skill. Thinking is regarded asutilizing existing knowledge or creating new knowledge by combining symbolized
representations and data appropriately, while making full use of generic skills, driven andpromoted by character or attitudes, and directed by values.
In cognitive science or AI research in recent years, however, a trend of thought isemerging that rejects modern Western mainstream frameworks such as “thinking consistsof knowledge, skills and character” or “learning is divided into passive learning andactive learning.” It is a trend that has an affinity with the ontology or knowledge theoryof phenomenology, hermeneutics, and pragmatism1. What I attempt in this presentation
is to present another view on thinking, inquiry, and learning in a way that follows a newscientific-philosophical trend to criticize the reductionist idea that regards knowing andthinking as the inner workings of the mind and the brain, namely, to recognize action,
perception, and thinking as one continuous whole. The issues I discuss here are limited
to the basic frameworks and ideas of human abilities, thinking, inquiry, and learning.
However, if the view I present is correct, education based on arguments on competencies,
including the idea of “qualities and abilities” may have serious limitations anddeficiencies.
1

For some examples of this recent trend of thought derived from the ideas of James J. Gibson and / or Francisco
Varela, and so on, see below. Clark, A., Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, A Bradford
Book, 1997. Noë, A., Action in Perception, MIT Press, 2004. Barrett, L., Beyond the Brain: How Body andEnvironment Shape Animal and Human Minds, Princeton University Press, 2011. Dreyfus, H. and Taylor, C.,
Retrieving Realism, Harvard University Press, 2015.
Symposium: Competence: A Critical Approach to Contemporary Education

Education Without Consideration of Human Inquiry

39

2. Inquiry Embedded in Preunderstanding
How do human beings think and inquire? We can summarize the characteristics ofhuman inquiry as follows, which is closely connected with what lies at the base of humanlife and is different from a search conducted by AI.
Much of human daily life is automated by following routines or habits. Lives that
follow them are in a steady flow of things. A human being who gets accustomed to agiven environment usually lives in a constant rhythm and tempo in such a flow,
maintaining balance, without thinking of “what should I do?” or “I am the agent of action.”
The world around her moves by itself.
When this steady flow is disturbed and interrupted and you realize that you are being
pulled apart from the world, you are forced to stop and think. It is an occurrence ofsituations to which you cannot respond by following existing expectations or prospects
about the world. Then, encountering the unfamiliar or the other obstructs the steady flowof life, shakes up your existing anticipations and prospects, and inspires “pathos(passion).” When you aim to mitigate or settle the “pathos” (wonder, resentment, pain,
sorrow, joy, and so on) in a convincing manner while responding to the environment, aquestion arises and an inquiry is triggered. What is needed to deepen the question anddevelop the inquiry is nothing but a thought as reflection that involves symbolic
manipulation and information processing.
When the flow of your life is steady and stable, you acquire some expectations orprospects, namely, an outlook or perspective about the future of the state of things you
confront. In general, these are tied to certain concepts or symbolized representations, butthese expectations or prospects emerge as implicit or tacit knowledge; in their originalform they are not the knowledge connected with a certain concept or representation. Since
they are knowledge which is brought about by collaboration between the body-brain andthe environment, and not knowledge about the environment, it is possible for
expectations or prospects of the environment not to require any concepts or
representations. Here I refer to this kind of understanding, which does not necessarily
require concepts or representations as “preunderstanding” (Vorverständnis)2 by using theterm hermeneutics.
In this presentation, I explain the structure of preunderstanding by using the concept2

Here I got suggestions from Hubert Dreyfuss and Charles Taylor's ideas of “preunderstanding” and “thepreconceptual” (Dreyfus, H. and Taylor, C., Retrieving Realism, Harvard University Press, 2015) rather than
“Vorverständnis” derived from Heideggerian hermeneutics.
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

40

R. MATSUSHITA

of “tacit knowledge” (Michael Polanyi) and “perceptual experience” (Alva Noë) as a clue.
According to both, the whole or the invariant can be understood implicitly without
representation or judgment. The recognition of wholeness or invariance cannot be
attained by the accumulation or combination of parts or elements but emerges in an
unexpected way from interactions among parts or elements. Namely, according to
Polanyi, a “comprehensive entity” emerges from “dwelling in” the relationship ofelements3; according to Noë, as a result of moving around with “sensorimotor skills” inthe environment, a “sensorimotor profile” of “appearance” or “how things appear” thatvaries according to movement is obtained, while at the same time, “how things are” that
does not vary with movement is “enacted.”4
The preunderstanding is, as it were, an understanding of the dynamic relationshipbetween the part and the whole, the specific and the general, or the particular and theuniversal; so, it allows us to foresee or anticipate the whole from parts. When looking at
it from this point of view, we can understand inquiry as an endless process in which theexisting preunderstanding becomes unstable when a new part or element is introduced
and therefore jumps to another new stable preunderstanding discontinuously throughemergence.
If the above explanation is correct, even primordial preunderstanding that does notinclude any representations or judgments can be regarded as a product of dynamic
cognitive activity, which could be called proto-inquiry. It can be said that the proto-matrix
of inquiry is embedded in preunderstanding, where the general is understood directlyfrom the specific processes moving around the environment skillfully; in other words,
where new understandings and actions can emerge in an unpredictable way from theinteraction between the whole and parts in the environment. By virtue of that type of
proto-inquiry, the acquisition of mother language, the understanding of another person’s
physical or emotional expressions, the acquisition of various kinds of physical skills /techniques / arts, and so on can be attained.
3. Education That Promotes / Hinders Inquiry
When we turn our eyes onto human inquiry by taking what is invisible in human life
into consideration, we can see that we actually follow a framework that can be put into
the form of “preunderstanding (with the proto-matrix of inquiry) leads to inquiry (with3
4

Polanyi, M., The Tacit Dimension, Routledge, 1966.
Noë, op. cit., chapter 3.

Symposium: Competence: A Critical Approach to Contemporary Education

Education Without Consideration of Human Inquiry

41

thinking) through pathos” instead of that of “thinking consists of knowledge, skills andcharacter,” which is accepted by arguments of competencies worldwide. So, what kindof education is required to promote inquiry (with thinking)? According to the former
framework, it is necessary to nurture a fertile preunderstanding before anything else inorder to promote inquiry. Nurturing preunderstanding means having the opportunity tomove around in the environment freely, namely, to meet various and unknown people,
things, and events, and entrusting yourself to the emergence of knowledge and skills.
Although it is possible for preunderstanding to not include any representations or
judgments, it is necessary to expand the scope and deepen the substance of
preunderstanding by connecting it with various kinds of symbols and concepts in orderto promote and advance the inquiry. What is necessary for a question to arise is to be
shaken into preunderstanding by encountering unfamiliar people, things, and events. But
then if preunderstanding has richness and profundity a significant question can arise evenwhen you encounter trivial information, and consequently inquiry can endure. In contrast
with the case when preunderstanding is shallow and narrow, even an unprecedented
experience will only bring ad hoc fun or shock instead of enduring questions, and will
not lead you to inquiry or investigation. In today’s society, if your preunderstanding lacks
broad and profound conceptual understanding, you cannot foresee distant consequencesof social occurrences where politics, economics, and science have a great influence while
being intertwined with each other. Therefore, due to the lack of expectations or prospects,
your passion is not likely to be stirred up easily, and questions about many social issues
will seldom arise. It is indispensable to read a wide variety of linguistic texts to acquire
knowledge and information in order to advance inquiry and elaborate on the ideas
obtained in the inquiry. Furthermore, walking around what Ivan Illich called the“vineyard of the text” is important in order to initiate as well as deepen the inquiry.
To continue the inquiry it is also essential for the inquirer to keep asking the question
by not only thinking of the question as meaningful or significant but also accepting
responsibility for others or things. To that end, it is necessary to interact constantly withthe environment and participate in the community of inquiry which shares similarinterests or questions. In other words, what you need in order to continue the inquiry is tomaintain dialog, namely a calling-responding relationship with people, things, events,
texts, etc. and constantly reflect and correct your understanding. Dialog is not just talking
here. Dialog is a symbolic expression of the way in which we face others and things, orthe attitude toward the world surrounding an agent.
Turning to the other question: what kind of education hinders or impedes inquiry?
It is one that keeps the preunderstanding in an immature or narrow state. Examples we
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

42

R. MATSUSHITA

often find today include: education that is eager to arrange tools or equipment in order toeffectively and efficiently lead learners’ thinking and behavior to goals, or that reduces
learning to information processing or the operation of signs while pursuing the rationalityof education and which turns even the encountering of the other or the dialogs into the
manipulation of symbols or information. Under the type of education just cited thelearning of concepts and information does not lead to a deepening of preunderstanding,so the ability to foresee the consequences of circumstances and inquire about unknown
facts or truths remains poor or premature. The result is that those who lack such abilities
are likely to feel anxious about themselves and tend to be afraid of others and unknown
society. The more society becomes uncertain, the more the disease of the education thathinders inquiry will become apparent.
4. Perversions and Mistakes of Arguments on Competencies
If we seek to equip learners with competencies without taking account of theinherent character of human inquiry as described so far, we may get to a destination whichis completely different to the one we originally aimed at. Scenes of the wrong destination
we may arrive at can be summarized as follows.
1. When following the framework of “thinking consists of knowledge, skills andcharacter” or “learning is divided into passive learning and active learning,” on whicharguments on competencies including the idea of “qualities and abilities” are based,
thinking and learning are likely to be reduced to symbolic manipulation or information
processing so as to produce the visible outcome expected by educational administrators.
In this case, however, no matter how hard you provide learners the opportunity for the“proactive, interactive and deep learning,” your attempts will turn to the “education thathinders inquiry,” because the learning will lose its substance, preunderstanding willremain shallow, and encounters with the unfamiliar will be eliminated.5
2. There is no problem representing what you have acquired as a result of constantinquiry as the “ability to think / make decisions / express oneself and so on.” The notionthat knowledge, skills, and character play important roles in inquiry is not necessarily
wrong. However, the notion will fall into false consciousness brought about by the so5

See also, Matsushita, R., “Shutaiteki / taiwateki de fukai mnabi” no hakarishirenai konnan: Miushinawareta

kanōsei wo motomete (The Incredible Difficulties of the “Proactive, Interactive and Deep Learning”; In Search of
Lost Possibilities), Group Didactica ed., Fukai manabi wo tsumugidasu: kyōka to kodomo no siten kara (Spinningout the Deep Learning: From the Viewpoints of School Subjects and Children), Tokyo: Keisōshobō, 2019.

Symposium: Competence: A Critical Approach to Contemporary Education

Education Without Consideration of Human Inquiry

43

called “reification,” when you consider as follows; knowledge, skills and character are
the abilities and qualities which belong to an individual and exist separately as they are
named; acquiring each can be set as educational objectives respectively, and therefore
each objective can be attained rationally through stepwise and effective teaching methods
that have been adopted away from the context of inquiry. In other words, the idea of“qualities and abilities” comes to connect with a fictional view of education, whichaffirms the teaching of what cannot be learned in such a way.
3. Competencies including “qualities and abilities” are not representations of whatreally exist but the symbolized representations of what education should equip children
with so that they can be comprehensible and accountable for educators or stakeholders.
Nevertheless, if you assume that the learning and teaching of each component and its
subcomponents is possible by rational educational methods and attempt to verify successor failure of learning and teaching by means of evidence, you will find the contradictionthat the educational objectives as fiction are not only attained but also verified. Education
goes beyond fiction and turns into fake.
4. Moreover, when components and their subcomponents of competencies are
regarded as the real entity that exists exactly as named, education can have a serious
misunderstanding about the interpretation of those components / subcomponents. For
example, regarding “self-control”6; when education attempts to equip learners with socialand emotional skills by rational methods, it is likely to equip them with the skills of“emotion management,” by which you can purposely conceal your real emotions andforge appropriate expressions for the scene while calculating the effect you will have onothers, instead of acquiring the self-discipline necessary for inquiry by practicing inquiry.
With such misunderstanding, your pathos (passion) will be pushed beneath yourconsciousness and questions that lead to inquiry will not arise.
The problems concerning competencies are not limited to what I explained above.
Along with a more detailed explanation of human inquiry, I would like to discuss themagain on another occasion.

Acknowledgment
This paper was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP15K04216.

6

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ed., Skills for Social Progress: The Powerof Social and Emotional Skills, 2015, chapter 3.
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

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

Possibilities and Pitfalls of Competency-Based Education

Masahiro NASU
Sophia University

1. Introduction
The new National Curriculum Standard has implemented with various features, oneof which is its unique reviewing process. It took over a 10-month long period to establish
subcommittees and working groups for individual school subjects since the first meetingof consultation of ministers.
Over this period, all discussions were intensively carried out by the Special
Committee on Curriculum Planning. The committee members undertook a radical
review of the current National Curriculum Standard, clarifying such fundamental
questions as what an ideal school of the future should be like, what academic ability all
children need to develop, and how the curriculum improvement should be made in orderto help children develop academic ability. The Summary of Issues released by the Special
Committee on Curriculum Planning explains the reason why the committee took thissteps as follows: “Before we begin to discuss the individual content of what to teach, we
first need to look at competencies to be developed from the children’s viewpoint as alearner and define the competencies in light of ‘what children will become able to do’
through learning across the curriculum and/or individual subject. Then, we can examine‘what children need to learn’ or the necessary individual contents of the instruction andconstruct ‘how children learn’ each content imagining the specific children’s learning
behavior” (Special Committee on Curriculum Planning, 2015, pp.7-8).
The concept of ‘what children will become able to do’ is the “competencies” as an
idea of academic ability under the new National Curriculum Standard.
The Summary of Issues continues to state that “the direction of the committee’s
discussion is supported by the accumulation of the findings of the scientific research on‘learning’ or ‘knowledge,’ which has been trying to demonstrate ‘what it means to learn’Possibilities and Pitfalls of Competency-Based Education45

or ‘what knowledge is’ ” (Special Committee on Curriculum Planning, 2015, 8).
In the Summary of Issues, Special Committee on Curriculum Planning raises at least
three important points.
First, as the basis of this reviewing process, it is clearly stated that there is a sense ofvalues that new curriculum standard has a perspective of children as a learner.
Secondly, as a result of reviewing the curriculum from the viewpoint of children,‘what children will become able to do’ or the argument of academic ability was placed at
the top as a goal, and then ‘what children learn’ and‘how children learn,’ which is theargument of educational content and method was positioned as means of achieving thegoal.
Third, to support the discussions as mentioned above, there is a clear awareness of
the accumulation of scientific findings on ‘learning’ and ‘knowledge.’
In the traditional discussions on the curriculum, the focus of discussion tended to beon listing the knowledge and skills that the children needed to acquire for the individual
subject from the perspective of adults as a teacher. However, it is more important to clarify
how knowledge and skills are developed in each child and help their lives. Unless thisprocess becomes evident, it is concerned that the children can not effectively utilize theknowledge and skills taught by the adults. In this sense, it is revolutionary in the historyof curriculum policymaking that, before examining specific content of education, thespecial committee began with discussing what national curriculum standard means fromthe perspective of children’s competencies and how their competencies can be extended
and refined.
For future discussion, it is essential to organize the concrete curriculum based on theabove-mentioned new principle and implement the educational practice. Toward thisgoal, it is necessary to achieve a rich creation of the new curriculum collaborating withother scholars and practitioners from various fields of study of education.
2．Research on competence and some related questions(1) White’s concept of competence
As described in the Summary of Issues, the concept of competency and the idea of
education based on it have been developed through scientific research on ‘competence’such as ‘learning’ and ‘knowledge’ of human beings. Competency has its roots in several
studies, but at first, we should discuss Robert White's work (White, 1959, 1963).
Based on observations of infants and young children, White argued that humanbeings have a natural tendency to engage actively to the environment surrounding
themselves, this natural tendency brings children the interaction with the environment,
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

46

M. NASUand children expand and refine the effective ways to interact with the environment. This
whole process is as White called competence.
In his discussion, White defined competence as an innate motivational factor and therelational and cognitive capability to interact effectively with the environment.
Interestingly, in his definition of competence, ‘knowing’ does not simply mean
knowing the name or understanding the concept, but it also implies being ‘able’ toeffectively ‘interact’ with an object according to its characteristics, and acquiring andrefining generic skills of ‘interaction’ through ‘knowing’ and ‘interacting’ the individual
object.
In other words, White proposed competence as a holistic concept that includes the
motivational factors driving ‘knowing,’ the mechanisms of ‘knowing,’ and the way to‘interact’ with an environment that expands and refines by ‘knowing’ both qualitatively
and quantitatively.
(2) McClelland's concept of competence
While paying attention to White’s claims, it was David McClelland, who allowed us
to develop or downsize competence into meanings widely used today (McClelland, 1973,1993).
McClelland demonstrated with concrete facts that traditional intelligence tests, school
grades, and certificates of qualification, which examine possession and understanding of
domain-specific knowledge, do not predict job performance or success in life. In his
discussion, he emphasizes affective factors such as motivation and emotional selfregulation, positive self-concept and self-reliance, and skills related to interpersonal
adjustment and communication.
McClelland defines competence as the factors that are necessary and sufficient toachieve high-quality problem solving for the various challenging situations faced in real
life. Of course, knowledge was also included in the competence category, but its weightremained relatively small in his definition of competence.
The discovery by McClelland, as a natural consequence, will have a significant
impact on corporate personnel management and organizational management, as well ason the curricula and evaluation of higher education institutions that supply humanresources to companies.
(3) Expectations for dialogue and collaboration between factual and normative
science
For White, ‘competence’ means becoming able to interact effectively with a different
Symposium: Competence: A Critical Approach to Contemporary Education

Possibilities and Pitfalls of Competency-Based Education47

environment. McClelland, on the other hand, defines ‘competence’ as a criterion for
professional achievement and success in life. Although both definitions have certain
things in common in terms of whether they can individually and creatively carry out
appropriate problem-solving actions according to the situation, the directions of their
discussion are the opposite. White starts his discussion from the innate tendencies ofhuman beings, whereas McClelland starts from social needs and practical benefit.
McClelland proposed to define competence as the factors necessary and sufficient toguide success in life, but it is necessary to rigorously examine what success is in life andwho decides it. If this is neglected and the dominant values of society are easily adopted,
then education will serve to stabilize and reproduce the current social order and politicaland economic systems, and eventually become a social device to strengthen them.
Content-based education which aimed to select and teach knowledge and skills from
cultural assets such as academia, science, and art, may have had structural difficulties inconnecting with social reality, but that is why it was also ‘safety.’ On the other hand,competency-based education from the perspective of curriculum tends to be societycentered. In the competency-based education, the condition and function of education
depend on the two principles over the relationship between education and society: which
is whether education will follow social change (social efficiency) or whether it will
generate social change through supporting the development of the child who will be thesubject of social construction (social reconstruction).
As seen above, the concept of competency-based makes it possible for education to
be closely related to the real world, but it also has greater risks. In this sense, thecompetency-based education can cut two ways, so that it needs to be carefully examined.
Also, it should be noted that the idea of competency-based has arisen from scientificresearch centered on psychology. As seen in White’s study, it provides many suggestions
for the creation of education based on what children’s ‘learning’ is and what ‘knowledge’means. This is a significant achievement in changing the principle of curriculum
development, which has been apt to focus on examining from the viewpoint of adults.
At the same time, in the competency-based education, it is more necessary than thecontent-based education to carefully and extensively discuss the values and the social
engagement that we need to aim for; however, science does not have sufficientmethodology to refer to the values. This shows that there are limitations and perils ofscience studies in the creation of education, which raise expectations for the leadershiprole of normative science centered on educational philosophy.
Furthermore, what can be done, and what cannot be done in the factual sciences suchas psychology and learning science? What can be done, and what cannot be done in
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

48

M. NASUnormative studies centered on philosophy? It is hoped that these issues will be thoroughly
examined and that the two academic fields will continue to interact and collaborate witheach other closely.
3．Is generic skills substance or capability?
Competency-based education aims to enable children to individually and creatively
carry out problem-solving activities appropriate to the situation. It has been believed thatthe core of these efforts is the development of generic skills that go beyond individual
subjects. However, generic skills do not exist generically and noumenally as a separate
thing from the domain-specific knowledge taught in each subject.
For example, psychologists believe that thinking skills refer to the function of anenormous amount of domain-specific knowledge that is semantically and functionallylinked to various situations and contexts and is highly refined so that it can be freely
delivered as needed. When we see children able to solve problems through the uniqueand creative delivery of appropriate knowledge and skills in response to situations,contexts, and problems, we believe that they have a high level of thinking skills, but inreality, it is the specific knowledge that exists and functions within the children.
As Gilbert Ryle has pointed out, it is wrong to believe that there is a substantive powerthat produces a characteristic behavior behind itself (Ryle, 1987). Practically speaking, it
is impossible to teach thinking skills itself directly, and through each knowledge and skills,
generic thinking skills (or action or state that appears to be thinking skills) has always
been realized.
In recent years, in light of an academic ability argument and curriculum, there havebeen some cases where teachers have tried to teach generic skills one by one into children,
but they have fallen into the same error. Moreover, this idea turns competency into newcontents, which is almost impossible but also extremely dangerous and annoying because
it spreads misunderstandings about competency-based education.
Instead, the practical goal is to improve the quality of domain-specific knowledge andpromote its elaboration. In order to realize children’s generic skills (or action or state thatappears to be generic skills), it is necessary to provide lessons based on ‘a disciplinebased epistemological approach,’ and it is even more urgent to reinstate and expand
subject content research.
Interestingly, the same idea has been already evident in White’s concept ofcompetence Moreover, according to White, every child innately owns the emergence ofSymposium: Competence: A Critical Approach to Contemporary Education

Possibilities and Pitfalls of Competency-Based Education

49

competence and the developing mechanisms of competence, so even the expression‘developing the children’s competencies’ may not be appropriate. We probably shouldrefer to ‘facilitate to become evident of competencies,’ ‘prepare a learning environment
in order to enhance and refine competencies’ may be appropriate. From this point of view,
it is possible to define what teaching each subject means in the new National CurriculumStandard as facilitating children’s ‘competence’ more tangible, enhanced, and refined inlight of ‘a discipline-based epistemological approach.’
References
Ryle, G. (1949), The Concept of Mind, London: Hutchinson.
Special Committee on Curriculum Planning (2015) Summary of Issues.
McClelland, D. (1973) Testing for competence rather than “Intelligence”. American
Psychologist, 28, pp.1-14.
McClelland, D. (1993). Introduction. In Spencer, L.M., & Spencer, S.M. 1993
Competence at work: Models for a superior performance. John Wiley & Sons. pp.38.
White, R.W. (1959) Motivation reconsidered: The concept of competence. Psychological
Review, 66, pp.297-333.
White, R.W.（1963） Ego and Reality in Psychoanalytic Theory ‒A Proposal Regarding
Independent Ego Energies. International University Press, New York.

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

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

Teaching for the Possibility of Being Taught:
World-Centred Education in an Age of Learning
Gert BIESTA
Brunel University London & University of Humanistic Studies

1. Introduction: The need for a recovery of teaching
Over the past twenty years a rather common critique of teaching has emerged inmany research publications and policy documents. Again and again we hear that socalled ‘traditional’ teaching – where the teacher speaks and students are supposed to listen
and absorb information – is bad and outdated, and where something allegedly more
modern, focused on the facilitation of students’ learning is seen as good, desirable and ‘ofthe future.’ While the opposition between ‘traditional’ and ‘contemporary’ is itself alreadya bit stale, we should also not forget how traditional the critique of traditional teachingitself actually is. John Dewey already made the point, as did many educators in many
countries around the world before and after him. The critique of traditional teaching is
also not entirely valid, because even in classrooms where teachers speak, and students sit
quietly, a lot of things are actually happening. In this regard I agree with Virginia
Richardson’s observation that “students also make meaning from activities encounteredin a transmission model of teaching” (Richardson, 2003, p. 1628).
It is also ironic that some of the most popular technology-mediated forms ofeducation – such as TED talks, MOOCs and the numerous professional and amateur
instructional videos on YouTube – are all staged in traditional ways, with someone talking
and explaining so that others can watch, listen and learn. This begins to suggest that there
actually may be something wrong with the critique of traditional teaching rather thanwith traditional teaching itself. Yet making this point and trying to establish a moregeneral case for the recovery of teaching is fraught with difficulties because nowadays
the most vocal arguments in favour of teaching come from the conservative end of thepolitical spectrum, aimed at re-establishing the kind of order and control that apparently
is lacking in modern society and modern education (for a different take on this issue seeTeaching for the Possibility of Being Taught

51

Meirieu, 2007). This seems to suggest that the only progressive alternative lies in thedemise of the teacher and a turn towards learning; a turn where the teacher only exists asa facilitator of otherwise ‘autonomous’ learning processes.1
The problem here has to do with the binary construction of options, that is, with theidea that the only meaningful response to authoritarian forms of teaching – teaching as
an act of control – lies in the abolition of teaching and a turn towards learning. Whatremains remarkably absent is the exploration of a third option that focuses on thereconstruction of our understanding of teaching along progressive lines. Yet it is in suchan option – which relies on the idea that freedom is not an escape from external influences
but rather has to do with establishing a ‘grown up’ relationship with what may haveauthority in our lives – that we can see the beginnings of an entirely different response toauthoritarian forms of teaching.
In my book The Rediscovery of Teaching (Biesta 2017) I have tried to make the casefor such a third option, beyond teaching as control and beyond learning as freedom. This
has involved discussion of a range of topics, including the question what it means to exist
as subject in and with the world; how much learning education actually needs; what
teaching may have to do in emancipatory education; and what all this means for the workof the teacher. In this presentation I will focus on one particular thread of the bigger
argument that brings together two key questions of the wider discussion, namely thequestion whether teaching is necessarily a limitation of the student’s freedom and whether
learning is automatically an expression of this freedom.
In what follows I start from the contention that to the extent to which the critique of
traditional teaching is a critique of teaching as control, this critique is valid as it highlightsthat under such conditions the student can only appear as object of the teacher’s intentions
and interventions, but not as a subject in its own right. (This is also the central point inPaulo Freire’s critique of ‘banking education’ – see Freire 1993, pp.52-53.) I then argue
that the suggestion that we can overcome this problem by turning to students and theirlearning and, more specifically, their acts of sense making and comprehension, is notreally a way out, because such acts of sense making emanate from the self and return tothe self and thus run the risk that the self remains to itself rather than that it is drawn out
of itself, towards the world. In more philosophical terms I suggest, pursuing a line ofthought from Emmanuel Levinas, that our subject-ness is precisely not constituted
through acts of signification but is rather called forth from the ‘outside,’ in response, so

I use ‘autonomous’ here to refer to the idea that these processes are supposed to be going on anyway, irrespectiveof the presence of the teacher.
1

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

52

G. BIESTA

we might say, to the event of ‘being addressed.’ It is in this event that a different meaningof teaching manifests itself and it is this meaning that I seek to recover in this presentation.

2. Education and the ego-logical worldview
Central to Levinas’s work is his attempt to overcome what, after Levinas (1969, p.
35), we might call the ego-logical view of the world, that is, the way of thinking that starts
from the assumption of the existence of the self, in order then to thematise everythingoutside of the self. Levinas’s thought is, however, not a simple reversal of this gesture but
comes closer to what elsewhere (Biesta 2008) I have referred to as an “ethics ofsubjectivity.” This expression indicates that Levinas seeks to approach the question ofhuman subjectivity through ethics rather than through knowledge. In his work there is, inother words, no theory about the subject, no truth-claim about what the subject is, butrather an attempt to identify the situation where the self begins to matter, or, more
precisely, where I matter, where it matters that I am I and not just anyone.
When Levinas writes that he “describe[s] subjectivity in ethical terms” (Levinas,
1985, p.95) he seeks to highlight that he sees responsibility as “the essential, primary andfundamental structure of subjectivity” (ibid.). He emphasises, however, that
responsibility here “does not supplement a preceding existential base” (ibid.). It is not thatthe subject first exists – as a self-sufficient ego or subject – and only then encounters a
responsibility or decides to take on a responsibility or to become responsible. It is rather,as Levinas puts it, that “the very node of the subjective is knotted in ethics understood as
responsibility” (ibid.). Responsibility, in the helpful formulation from Zygmunt Bauman(1993, p.13) is thus to be understood as “the first reality of the self,” the first ‘moment,’
the first ‘situation’ where the self begins to matter.
To suggest that responsibility is the first reality of the self – or more precisely: thatthe encounter with responsibility is the moment where the self is called to be a self – isvery different from how contemporary educational theories and practices conceive of thestudent. In such theories and practices the student is depicted crucially as a learner, that
is, as someone who is trying to ‘make sense’ of the situations he or she encounters. The
turn from teaching to learning, and the encompassing ‘learnification’ of educational
discourse and practice (for the latter term see Biesta 2010), rejects the idea that it ispossible for teachers to give anything to their students – and it particularly rejects the ideaof teaching as the transmission of knowledge from the teacher to the student. It argues,
instead, that students are continuously engaged in processes of sense making andThematic Research: Rethinking Teaching: Toward the Reconstruction of (Philosophy of) Education

Teaching for the Possibility of Being Taught

53

interpretation, and that the task of teachers is to construct learning environments in whichsuch sense making can take place and, through, facilitate students’ learning in and throughsuch environments.
In my book I have used the image of the robot vacuum cleaner to show what such alearner-centred approach to education entails, also in order to make clear what isfundamentally lacking in this set up. Robot vacuum cleaners are indeed able to performtheir task – cleaning the floor – autonomously, that is, without the need for help from theoutside. What is even more interesting is that, over time, robot vacuum cleaners canbecome more efficient at performing their task. If at first the pattern they follow is guided
by the particular algorithm they were programmed with, over time they become moreadjusted to the environment in which they are operating, moving around tables, chairs
and other objects, rather than bumping into them. This shows that robot vacuum cleaners
can learn or, more precisely, that they can adapt to their environment in an intelligent way.
While their learning is autonomous in that it occurs without any intervention from theoutside – without any direct intervention from a teacher, so we might say – this does notmean that their learning cannot be influenced. The way to do this is by putting themachine in a different environment so that it needs to adapt to differing environing
conditions. While such learning remains a lifelong task – each new situation requires
adjustment and adaptation – the machines may nonetheless become more skilled andefficient at adapting to new situations.2
I believe that the way in which robot vacuum cleaners work, provides us with aremarkably accurate picture of a, and perhaps even the prevailing contemporary
educational imaginary. This is an imaginary that sees education as a learner-centred
endeavour, where it is ultimately for learners to construct their own understandings andbuild up their own skills, and where the main task of teachers is to provide arrangements
in and through which such processes can happen. In this situation the teacher does, indeed,
no longer transmit anything but designs learning environments for students in order tofacilitate their learning. Similarly, students are not engaged in passive absorption but inactive adaptive construction, and it is through this that they acquire the skills andcompetences that make them more able at adapting to future situations. This also shifts
the meaning and position of the curriculum, which no longer exists as the content to betransmitted and acquired but becomes redefined as a set of ‘learning opportunities’ in andthrough which students, in a flexible and personalised way, pursue their own unique

The idea that the very aim of education is to become more effective at adaptation to changing situations is, forexample, the key premise of so-called 21st century skills.
2

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

54

G. BIESTA

learning trajectories.3
If I were to characterise the underlying view about the human being and its
relationship to the world, I would suggest calling this a hermeneutical approach and, moregenerally, a hermeneutical worldview.4 The reason for this lies in the fact that the humanbeing is depicted here first and foremost as a sense-making being, that is, as a being who
is in relationship with the world – natural and social – through acts of interpretation andmeaning-making. Such acts are issued from the self and return to the self ‘via’ the world.
In such acts the world thus appears as an object of our sense making.
Now one could argue that this is simply how things are. One could argue, in otherwords, that this worldview is true, that human beings are basically sense-making beings
capable of intelligent adaptation to every changing circumstances, and that we should
therefore build our understanding of knowledge and communication, but also of ethics,
politics, and education upon this premise.5 But one could, of course, also pause for a
moment and ponder whether this worldview is as inevitable as it would seem, perhaps
by asking what is not conceivable within the confines of this worldview.
There are two questions I would like to raise in this regard. One is whether in thisworldview the world, natural and social, can speak – and whether it can do so in its own
terms and on its own terms. The second is whether in this worldview we can be spoken
to, that is, whether we can be addressed (which actually is the question about the very
possibility of teaching). The hermeneutical worldview – or if one wishes: the worldview
of intelligent adaptation – seems to preclude these two options. The reason for this lies in
3

It is perhaps important to note that while this imaginary is contemporary – by which I intend to say that it is shaping
contemporary educational practice in many contexts and settings – its theoretical frame is not new. We can find it,
for example, in the theory of autopoietic systems, that is, of systems that are able to regenerate themselves in constantinteraction with their environment – an idea that was developed in biology by Humberto Maturana and Francis
Varela (see, for example, Maturana, Varela & Uribe, 1974; Maturana & Varela, 1980) and that was further develop
by Niklas Luhmann in his theory of social systems (Luhmann, 1984; 1995). A key insight of Luhmann’s work isthat autopoietic systems (such as, for example, human individuals) cannot participate in each other’s autopoiesis –which means, for example, that they cannot take part in each other’s adaptive activities or cognitive constructions –but that they can be in each other’s environments so as to have an indirect effect on each other’s autopoiesis. Perhaps
the most famous example of the way of thinking that underlies the ideas outlined above can be found in the work ofJohn Dewey, whose understanding of action, communication and learning is indeed based on a view of the humanorganism as being in constant transaction with its environment, constantly trying to establish a dynamic equilibrium
through processes of doing and undergoing, to use Dewey’s phrase (see, for example, Biesta & Burbules, 2003;
Biesta, 2009; and for Dewey’s philosophical account Dewey, 1925). And in Dewey’s work we can indeed find theclaim that “we never educate directly, but indirectly by means of the environment” (Dewey, 1966, p.19).
4
The reference to hermeneutics does not ‘cover’ all positions and views that go under this heading. As I will makeclear later in this chapter, the use of this notion is particularly inspired by Levinas.
5
I am inclined to say that pragmatism – particularly in the work of Dewey and Mead – provides one of the mostdeveloped examples of this ‘programme.’ This presentation can therefore also be read as an exploration of the limitsof the pragmatic worldview and everything that has emerged from this worldview, including a theory and practiceof education.
Thematic Research: Rethinking Teaching: Toward the Reconstruction of (Philosophy of) Education

Teaching for the Possibility of Being Taught

55

the fact that the hermeneutical worldview depicts a universe that is immanent to myunderstanding, that is immanent to my acts of comprehension, acts that always aim tobring the world ‘out there’ back to me. While such acts of comprehension do have an
object – hermeneutics is not phantasy or pure construction – this object always appears
as an object of my sense making and, in this sense, remains dependent on my acts ofsignification. It is in relation to these very questions – the question of immanence and thequestion of signification – that Levinas provides a rather different point of view. In thenext two steps of my presentation I will briefly discuss some of Levinas’s key ideas withregard to these issues.

3. An opening in an opening: Levinas on signification and sense
In his essay ‘Signification and Sense’ (Levinas 2006 6 ), Levinas explores theconditions of possibility of signification, broadly conceived as acts of sense making orinterpretation. One line in the argument he puts forward concerns what he refers to as the“anti-Platonism in contemporary philosophy of signification” (Levinas, 2006, p. 18).
This anti-Platonism entails the claim that “the intelligible is inconceivable outside thebecoming that suggests it” (ibid; emph. added.). It is the idea that “(t)here does not exist
any signification in itself that a thought could reach by hopping over the reflections …
that lead to it” (ibid.; emph. in original). Or in slightly more concrete language, it is theidea that “all the different cultures, are no longer obstacles that separate us from theessential and the Intelligible (but are) the only possible paths, irreplaceable, andconsequently implicated in the intelligible itself” (ibid.).
Levinas thus describes a situation of total immanence where all our meaning making,all our signification, occurs inside culture and history and derives its meaning from such
cultural and historical contexts. He characterises this as anti-Platonic because for Plato“the world of significations precedes the language and culture that express it” so that itremains “indifferent to the system of signs that can be invented to make this world present
to thought” (ibid.) Plato, so Levinas argues, believed in the existence of “a privileged
culture (that) can understand the transitory and seemingly childish nature of historicalcultures” (ibid., pp. 18-19); a privileged culture that, so we might say, could give sense tosignification and make sense of signification. Levinas suggests that in contemporary
6

A different English translation was called ‘Meaning and Sense, see Levinas, 2008; the original French version was
published in 1964 under the title ‘La Signification et le Sens’.
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

56

G. BIESTA

philosophy of signification this option is no longer considered to be possible. What we
find instead is a “subordination of intellect to expression” (p.19; emphasis added), that is,a situation where everything we can say or express has to be expressed in and throughexisting cultural and historical discourses and contexts and gains its meaning from suchdiscourses and contexts.
For Levinas this not only poses a philosophical problem, which has to do with thequestion where signification actually gets its meaning from. It also poses a practicalproblem, which has to do with the question how communication is actually possible if it
is supposed to happen entirely ‘inside’ existing cultural and historical frameworks. And
it poses an urgent political problem, because, as Levinas puts it, this “most recent, mostdaring and influential anthropology keeps multiple cultures on the same level” (ibid.,p.20). According to Levinas the contemporary philosophy of signification thus amounts
to cultural and historical relativism. Because of its total immanence, contemporary
philosophy of signification lacks a criterion that would allow us to make a judgement
about the ‘quality’ of differing interpretations, so as to be able to distinguish between
those that ‘make sense’ and those that do not ‘make sense,’ to put it bluntly. According to
Levinas contemporary philosophy of signification simply “takes satisfaction [secomplait] in the multiplicity of cultural significations” (ibid., pp. 25-26), which – and thisis important for my line of argument – manifests itself as a “refusal of engagement in the
Other” (ibid., p.26). Yet it is precisely in the latter ‘movement’ that Levinas sees an‘opening,’ that is, a way out of the predicament he sees.
There are two dimensions to how Levinas constructs his argument here, and along
both lines he seeks to establish two points. The first point is that signification “is situatedbefore Culture” and the second point that it is “situated in Ethics,” which, taken together,means that ethics is the “presupposition of all Culture and all signification” (ibid., p. 36;
emph. added; capitals in original). Rather than refusing engagement in the Other it isprecisely this engagement which, according to Levinas, is the origin of sense in that itprovides an “orientation” (ibid., p. 26). In a first step Levinas characterises this orientation“as a motion from the identical toward an Other that is absolutely other” (ibid.). Thisorientation which “goes freely from Same to Other” is what he refers to as “a Work”(ibid.; capitals in original). Yet for the Work to be radically Other-centred it “must not bethought as an apparent agitation of a stock that afterward remains identical to itself” –which is Levinas’s way of saying that engagement in the Other should not leave the self
unaffected or unchanged – nor must it be thought “as similar to the technique that …
transforms a strange world into a world whose otherness is converted to my idea” (ibid.)– which I read as another way of describing what, above, I have called the hermeneutical
Thematic Research: Rethinking Teaching: Toward the Reconstruction of (Philosophy of) Education

Teaching for the Possibility of Being Taught

57‘gesture,’ bringing what is other into my understanding. That is why Levinas insists that
the Work needs to be understood as “a movement of the Same toward the Other that neverreturns to the Same” (ibid., emphasis in original).
If the Work is really done without any returns, without anything coming back to us,
then it is also important, so Levinas argues, that we do not think of it as something that
fulfils some kind of need we would have – such as the need to do good or the need tocare for the other – as in such cases the fulfilment of the need would be the ‘return’ we
receive. In this context Levinas introduces the notion of desire (see ibid.). Yet here desire
is not to be understood as desire for fulfilment, which is why Levinas writes that “(t)heDesire for Others – sociality – arises in a being who lacks nothing or, more exactly, arises
beyond all that could be lacking or satisfying to him” (ibid.). In desire the ego goes out tothe Other “in a way that compromises the sovereign identification of the Ego with oneself”(ibid.). Desire so conceived is therefore non-egological. But how should we ‘approach’
this “desire for Others that,” according to Levinas, “we feel in the most common social
experience” (ibid., p.30)? Levinas observes that “(a)ll analysis of language incontemporary philosophy emphasizes, and rightfully so, its hermeneutic structure” (ibid.),that is, that our approach to the other is to be understood as an act of signification, an act
through which we try to understand and make sense of the other. Levinas, however, isafter a “third option” where the other is neither “collaborator and neighbour of our cultural
work of expression [nor] client of our artistic production, but interlocutor; the one towhom expression expresses” (ibid., emphasis added).
Precisely here we find a first and crucial ‘opening,’ in that Levinas suggests thatsignification is precisely not an egological act. It is not a gesture through which the ego
generates meaning, it is not self-generated expression ‘onto’ a world. Signification, inother words, is not hermeneutics because, as Levinas writes, “before it is a celebration of
being, expression is a relation with the one to whom I express the expression” (ibid.;emph. added). The Other “who faces me” is precisely for this reason “not included in the
totality of being that is expressed,” because in that case – and this is the crucial step in theargument – the other would only be a ‘product’ of my signification; the Other would be
my construction. The Other rather arises “behind all collection of being, as the one towhom I express what I express” (ibid.). That this is so, Levinas argues, is because it is
only through the presence of the Other as interlocutor that “a phenomenon such as
signification [can] introduce itself, of itself, into being” (ibid.).
That is why, as interlocutor, as the one to whom I express the expression “and whose
presence is already required so that my cultural gesture of expression can be produced,”
the Other is “neither a cultural signification nor a simple given” but rather “primordially,
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

58

G. BIESTA

sense” (ibid., emphasis in original). Here we have to remember that ‘sense’ for Levinas
is precisely that which gives our signification meaning and, going on from this, gives ourlife direction. Levinas emphasises that this ‘turn’ “means returning in a new way to
Platonism” (ibid., p.38) because it allows to go beyond “this saraband of countless
equivalent cultures, each one justifying itself in its own context” (ibid., p.37).
What Levinas is beginning to suggest, therefore, is that signification is not the ‘firstreality of the self,’ which means that we should not think of ourselves as sense-making
beings, but that sense-making only ‘makes sense’ in the encounter with the Other – anencounter which Levinas characterises as fundamentally of an ethical ‘nature.’

4. A second opening: The question of communication
Before I draw this discussion to a close there is one more aspect of Levinas’s line ofthought that needs to be brought in, a line which responds to the point raised above about
the question how communication – or with Levinas’s term: interlocution – is actuallypossible. It has to do with the question how the Other actually can be an interlocutor, and
it is here that I would suggest that a second ‘opening’ occurs.
While Levinas acknowledges that the manifestation of the Other is produced “in theway all signification is produced,” that is, through an act of my “comprehension of the
Other” which, as Levinas emphasises, is “a hermeneutic, an exegesis” (ibid., pp. 30-31),
the Other does not just come to me as a ‘product’ of my signification. After all, if thatwere the case then signification would remain the original event even if this signification
would have an ethical ‘quality,’ for example, arising from my intention to want to do goodto the other or care for the other. In addition to the appearance of the Other as phenomenon,as product of my signification, there is therefore also what Levinas refers to as the“epiphany of the Other” – an epiphany that bears its own significance, “independent of
the signification received from the world” (ibid., p. 31), as he puts it. The Other “not only
comes to us from a context but signifies itself, without that mediation” (ibid.). It is thisunmediated presence which Levinas refers as ‘face’ and it is to the epiphany of the facethat Levinas refers as ‘visitation’ (see ibid.). Face, so we might say, ‘breaks through’ its
signification, that is, through its image. This is a process of ‘deformalization’ (Cohen,
2006, p. xxxi) where the face speaks and where this speaking “is first and foremost thisway of coming from behind one’s appearance, behind one’s form; an opening in the
opening” (Levinas, 2006, p. 31).
But the face does not speak in general – its speaking is not “the unveiling of theThematic Research: Rethinking Teaching: Toward the Reconstruction of (Philosophy of) Education

Teaching for the Possibility of Being Taught

59

world” (ibid.). Rather the face speaks to me; the face addresses me, the face summonsme. It is precisely here, so Levinas argues, that “(c)onsciousness loses its first place”(ibid.) because “the presence of the face signifies an irrefutable order – a commandment– that arrests the availability of consciousness” (ibid.). Levinas emphasises that in thismoment of interruption consciousness is challenged by the face, but that it is crucial tosee that this challenge “does not come from awareness of that challenge” (ibid.) because
in that case, again, signification would come before the address. That is why Levinas
emphasises that it is “a challenge of consciousness, not a consciousness of the challenge.”(ibid, p. 33) This visitation is therefore “the upset of the very egoism of the Ego” (ibid.).
It is important to see, however, that this does not amount to the destruction of the Ego but
rather to what we might call a decentring; a decentring through which the ego gains its
unique significance. As Levinas explains, the responsibility “that empties the Ego of its
imperialism [rather] confirms the uniqueness of the Ego,” a uniqueness which lies in thefact “that no one can answer in my stead” (ibid.). And discovering “such an orientation
for the Ego means identifying Ego and morality” (ibid.) – and hence the moral ‘origin’ of
the Ego-as-subject, which is precisely what I have tried to express in the idea of an ethics
of subjectivity.

5. The criterion, communication, and the origin of signification
I have followed Levinas’s argument in detail in order to show how this line ofthought addresses the problems with the contemporary philosophy of signification,
which were the question of sense – Where does signification get its meaning from? – thequestion of communication – How is communication possible in a radically plural
universe? – and the question of the criterion – What makes it possible for us to evaluate
systems and traditions of signification? Levinas’s line of thought provides an answer tothese three questions, not so much to each of the questions separately but more in an
overlapping and interlocking way.
One key insight is the observation that signification is not an egological act oraccomplishment but consists of a relation with the one to whom I express an expression,
the one to whom expression expresses, as Levinas puts it. Signification thus derives its
sense from this particular ‘event’ or an ‘encounter’ with another being. In this relation the
Other does not appear as object of my signification, but as interlocutor. That is why the‘appearance’ of the Other is a matter of epiphany. And what appears is not an image of
the Other – which again would make the Other into the ‘product’ of my signification –E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

60

G. BIESTA

but what Levinas refers to as its face.
It is important to see that just as the face is not the product of my signification, theepiphany of the face is also not a matter of the other’s signification of me. The face does
not thematise me; the face does not make me into an object of its signification. Rather theface speaks to me. This speech – and this is crucial as well – is not a revelation of the
Other that I am just to receive.7 The key idea here is that the face speaks to me or, to be
more precise: the speech of the face addresses me (and here we need to emphasise boththe fact that the face addresses and that the face addresses me, in the singular, and not justanyone, which means that this is a first person matter and not a general theory or truth).
It is an address in which my ‘imperialism,’ my being with myself, is interrupted,
where my consciousness is challenged – “(t)he face disorients the intentionality thatsights it” (ibid., p.33) – and where I am called to respond, albeit that I always have thefreedom not to respond to this call, because the call is not an obligation but a call. It isprecisely in this moment, in this ethical event, that the Ego gains its significance, precisely
because it appears beyond/before/outside of any signification.
In short, then, the criterion that Levinas has been searching for appears here as ethics;
communication is not a matter of the exchange of meaning(s) but has its origin in theaddress, in the being-spoken-to; and it is in the ethical event of being addressed thatsignification acquires its sense, that significant becomes possible or, with the more precise
formulation Levinas offers: that signification introduces itself into being.

6. Teaching for the possibility of being taught
I started this presentation with critical questions about the all too common critiqueof traditional teaching – a critique that seems to have become the new dogma ofcontemporary education. I showed how this critique has led to a demise of teaching and
7

I do not have the time in this presentation to engage in detail with the distance between Levinas and Heidegger,
but this is one point where this distance appears and where, in my view, Levinas crucially moves beyond Heidegger.
Whereas, to put it briefly and crudely, Heidegger and Levinas both see a similar problem with signification – namelythat signification is egological, that it is driven by the self and always returns to the self – Heidegger proposes thatthe alternative to signification is reception, where we receive what speaks to us and care for it, whereas Levinas
proposes that the alternative to self-enclosed signification lies in the fact that what speaks to us addresses us, singles
us out, and summons a response. Whereas pure receptivity is ultimately criterion-less – it has no criterion to ‘select’or judge what it should care for – Levinas ‘moves’ us from receptivity to responsibility, where the question for me is
not how to receive and hold, but to ask what is being asked from me (with the emphasis, once more, on me in the
singular, not on anyone in general). The distance between Heidegger and Levinas is also the reason why, earlier inthis presentation I identified two different problems with the hermeneutical worldview – not only the problem how
the world can speak in its own terms but also how we can be spoken to.
Thematic Research: Rethinking Teaching: Toward the Reconstruction of (Philosophy of) Education

Teaching for the Possibility of Being Taught

61

the teacher and a turn towards learning; a turn where the teacher can only exist as a
facilitator of otherwise autonomous learning processes.
The reason for the emergence of the turn towards learning seems to lie in the factthat ‘traditional’ teaching is perceived as an act of control. The key problem with the ideaof teaching as control is that in such a relationship the student can never appear as a
subject but remains an object of the teacher’s intentions and interventions. Yet what
emerges from the ideas put forward in this presentation, is that the option that is proposed
as a response to the idea of teaching-as-control, namely the idea of learning as meaning
making or signification, suffers from the same problem in that in acts of signification thelearner also cannot appear as subject.
One way to understand why this is so has to do with the fact that acts of signification
are issued from the self and return – ‘via’ the world as I have put it – to the self.
Signification, so we might say, keeps the self to the self; to its own frameworks ofinterpretation and sense-making. Another way of looking at this, is to say that in its
ongoing attempts to adapt and adjust to always changing environing conditions the self
remains an object vis-à-vis the environment it is trying to adapt to. While such acts ofcreative adaptation may help the self to survive, it never results in a possibility for the self
to exist. The question that never arises, to put it differently, is whether the environment towhich the self is trying to adapt is an environment one ought to adapt to, an environment
worth adapting to. The self – and perhaps we should say: the adjusting or adaptive self –can never out of its own generate a criterion with which to evaluate that which it isadjusting to. It is thus ‘caught,’ as an object,’ by that to which it is adjusting – an issue I
tried to make clear with the image of the robot vacuum cleaner.
This is where the ‘opening’ Levinas establishes has its significance, as it shows that
our subject-ness is not constituted from the inside-out through acts of interpretation andadaptation, but is called into being from the outside, as an interruption of my immanence,an interruption of my being-with-myself, of my consciousness. This, as I have tried toshow, is neither the moment where I interpret the other, nor the moment where I listen to
the other, and it is also not the moment where the other makes sense of me, and in thisregard, it is entirely outside of the realm of signification. It rather is the moment where I
am addressed by the other, where the other, to use Levinas’s words, “[calls] upon theunique within me.”
Here we encounter an altogether different account of the ‘event’ of teaching, onethat is precisely not aimed at control, at the exercise of power and the establishment of anorder in which the student can only exist as object, but rather one that calls forth thesubject-ness of the student by interrupting its egocentrism, its being-with-itself and forE-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

62

G. BIESTA

itself. This is not only a teaching that puts us very differently in the world. We could evensay that this teaching puts us in the world in the first place. It is (a) teaching that draws us
out of ourselves, as it interrupts our ‘needs,’ to use Levinas’s term, and in this sense frees
us from the ways in which we are bound to or even determined by our needs and desires.
A final question this raises is whether the teacher appears in this set up as theinterrupter, as the one who addresses the student, calls the student to be a self, calls upon
the unique in the student – in order to uses phrases that, by now, have hopefully become
a little more familiar. While this may occur in teacher-student relationships, there are two
problems we should be mindful of. One is the risk that if we task teachers with the workof interruption, we may very quickly return them to the very place from which we tried
to release them – where the teacher ends up as the ‘power figure’ who ‘provokes’ thesubject-ness of the student. The other problem when we think that the teacher is the one
who addresses the student is the suggestion that the address can only come from theteacher which, obviously, is not true.
This is why I wish to suggest that key for the work of teachers is not to seethemselves as interrupters or ‘addressers’ but rather as those who try to turn students awayfrom their being-with-themselves and try to turn them towards ‘the world,’ that is towards
what may address them. Such a world-centred approach t education can never guaranteethat students will encounter an address, nor can it predict where the address may comefrom. But it is a teaching that at least tries to keep the possibility of the occurrence of theexperience of ‘being taught’ open.

7. The return of teaching
We have arrived, then, at the option that seems to be absent in the current way inwhich the critique of traditional teaching is being formulated, where the critique ofteaching-as-control immediately ends up with the idea of learning-as-freedom. In thispresentation I have not only tried to argue that a different alternative is possible. I havealso suggested that a different alternative ought to be possible. These ideas, then, begin tooutline a non-egological approach to teaching, an approach that is not aimed atstrengthening the ego, but at interrupting the ego-object, at turning it towards the world,so that it can become a self-subject.

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

Teaching for the Possibility of Being Taught

63

References
Bauman, Z. (1993). Postmodern ethics. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Biesta, G.J.J. (2008). Pedagogy with empty hands: Levinas, education and the questionof being human. In D. Egéa-Kuehne (ed), Levinas and education: At the intersectionof faith and reason (pp. 198-210). London/New York: Routledge.
Biesta, G.J.J. (2009). Pragmatism’s contribution to understanding learning-in-context. In
R. Edwards, G.J.J. Biesta & M. Thorpe (eds), Rethinking contexts for teaching andlearning. London/New York: Routledge.
Biesta, G.J.J. (2010). Good education in an age of measurement: Ethics, politics,
democracy. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Biesta, G.J.J. (2017). The rediscovery of teaching. London/New York: Routledge.
Cohen, R.A. (2006). Introduction. In E. Levinas, Humanism of the other. Urbana andChicago: Illinois University Press.
Dewey, J. (1925) Experience and nature. In Jo Ann Boydston (ed), John Dewey. The
later works (1925-1953), Volume 1. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois
University Press.
Dewey, J. (1966[1916]). Democracy and education. New York: The Free Press.
Freire, P. (1993[1972]). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New, revised 20th anniversary edition.
New York: Continuum.
Levinas, E. (1969[1961]). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority. Pittsburgh, PA &The Hague: Duquesne University Press & Martinus Nijhoff.
Levinas, E. (1985). Ethics and infinity. Conversations with Philippe Nemo. Pittsburgh,
PA: Duquesne University Press.
Levinas, E. (2006). Humanism of the other. Translated by Nidra Poller With an
introduction by Richard A. Cohen. Urbana and Chicago: Illinois University Press.
Levinas, E. (2008). Meaning and sense. In A.T. Peperzak, S. Critchley & R. Bernasconi(eds), Emmanuel Levinas: Basic philosophical writings. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Luhmann, N. (1984). Soziale Systeme: Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp.
Luhman, N. (1995). Social systems. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Maturana, H. R. & Varela, F. J. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of theliving. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Meirieu, P. (2007). Pédagogie: Le devoir de résister. Issy-les-Moulineaux: ESF éditeur.
Richardson, V. (2003). Constructivist pedagogy. Teachers College Record 105(9), 1623–
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

64

G. BIESTA

1640.
Varela, F.J., Maturana, H.R. & Uribe, R. (1974). Autopoiesis: The organization of living
systems, its characterization and a model. Biosystems 5(4), 187-196.

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

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

Teaching for the possibility of Ignorant Citizen in the Context
of Education in Japan

Shigeo KODAMAThe University of Tokyo
Abstract
Inspired by Gert Biesta’s insightful category of ignorant citizen and pedagogy of interruption, I will
discuss about the possibility of introducing these categories to citizenship education in Japan. The
Structure of my paper consists of 4 parts. First, I will discuss about the social structure of education in
post -WW2 Japan. Second, I would like to examine the transformation of post-WW2 system in Japanand refer to the shift to the political and refer to the significance of the category of Biesta’s ignorantcitizen. Third, based in the context mentioned above I would like to make it clarify how Biesta poses
the rediscovery of teaching. Fourth, I would like to make some comments to Biesta’s presentation(Biesta 2018).

1. Social structure of education in post -WW2 Japan
In the first part of this paper I will discuss about the social structure of education in
post -WW2 Japan.
Enrollment in upper secondary schools (high school for fifteen- to eighteen-yearolds in Japan) has risen from 50 percent in 1960 to over 80 percent in 1970, and to over
95 percent after the 1990s. Thus as Japan prospered economically, public upper
secondary schools accommodated nearly all potential students in Japan. In the post–Cold
War era, the social structure of education in Japan attained maturity. I believe the time is
now ripe for citizenship education.
As for the structural changes in school curriculums, there are four epochs in postWWII Japan.
First, the era of progressivism (1945–1958) saw the predominance of problem-

66

S. KODAMA

solving curriculums and waning of government regulation. Second, from 1958 to 1992,
systematic principles and discipline-centered curriculums were dominant, andgovernment regulation was enforced. Third, during the “pressure-free education” (yutori)
period (1992–2008), the Japanese government reintroduced a problem-solving
curriculum, and government regulation was partly relaxed. And fourth, the “postpressure-free education” period, from 2009 to the present, is of particular interest, because
citizenship education through curriculum innovation is required to overcome thedichotomy between the discipline-centered curriculums of the development era and the
problem-solving curriculums of the current pressure-free education era.
So I think citizenship education in Japan is introduced in the very political context
after the cold war era.

2. Shift to the political
So the question is that what is the specific structural change in the Post-Cold War
era .In the second part of my presentation I will answer to this question.
In 2015 the voting age for national and local government elections was lowered to
18 from 20, starting with the upper house election in the summer of 2016. This meansthat eighteen years old high school students can cast their own vote for government
election. It is a historical change in Japan.
In Japan, students had been sheltered from broader social and political movements
and circumstances and, therefore, had not had sufficient opportunity to be active
participants in the experiment of democracy. However, followed by the lowering ofvoting age to 18, Japanese government began to introduce a new type of politicaleducation, and many public schools are now trying to implement the education ofpolitical literacy focusing on the controversial issues, and mock election. This is aparadigm shift of political education from the sheltered system to the early exposuresystem.
Gert Biesta emphasizes this early exposure system by introducing the category ofignorant citizen. “The ignorant citizen is the one who is ignorant of a particular definitionof what he or she is supposed to be as a “good citizen.” The ignorant citizen is the one
who, in a sense, refuses this knowledge and, through this, refuses to be domesticated,refuses to be pinned down in a predetermined civic identity. This does not mean that theignorant citizen is completely “out of order””.(Biesta 2011:97)
Biesta challenges the traditional idea that it is possible to have a model for a good
Thematic Research: Rethinking Teaching: Toward the Reconstruction of (Philosophy of) Education

Teaching for the possibility of Ignorant Citizen in the context of Education in Japan67

citizen. Rather citizenship education must draw from various sources, especially practicalexperience, to effectively influence young individuals in becoming active citizens.
According to Biesta, the ignorant citizen is a key category to break through the traditional
idea of citizenship. “Learning here is not about the acquisition of knowledge, skills,
competencies or dispositions but has to do with an ‘exposure’ to and engagement withthe experiment of democracy. It is this very engagement that is subjectifying.”(Biesta
2011:97) It seems that Biesta’s “ignorant citizen” is like citizen as cocreator, which Harry
Boyte(Boyte 2004:92), citizenship theorist in US, or Hannah Arendt’s natality, thatmeans a beginning that conserves the world as new, and prevents it from beingruined.(Arendt 1958, Kodama 2006)

3. The condition of teaching beyond traditional idea of citizenship
Then I’d like to make it clear that in Biesta’s theoretical framework what is theunique characteristics of rediscovery of teaching different from other two models.
According to Biesta there is a kind of binary constructions of options, the first is theauthoritarian and traditional forms of teaching, and second is the abolition of teaching
and a turn towards learning. Then Biesta tries to pose the third option that focuses on thereconstruction of teaching along progressive line. In this section I will overview the
Biesta’s formulation on these three options.(Biesta 2018)
At the first option, the authoritarian and traditional forms of teaching, teacher speaks
and control students, then students are supposed to listen and absorb information.
At the second option, teacher only exists as a facilitator of autonomous learning
processes. Such a learner-centered approach could be explained as the image of the robot
vacuum cleaner. Like robot vacuum cleaner learners adapt to their environment in an
intelligent way without any intervention from the outside, without any direct intervention
from a teacher. Signification of the world by learner is, as Levinas criticizes, assumed to
be an act of accomplishment by pre-existence of the ego-logical self.
A third option focuses on the reconstruction of teaching along progressive lines
which is missing in both the first and second option. By introducing Levinas, Biesta
redefines the role of the teacher as interlocutor. From this point of view, Signification is
not an ego-logical accomplishment, but it derives its sense from the event or an encounter
with another being, and Other does not appear as object of signification, but asinterlocutor. Here the account of teaching is not aimed at control, at the exercise of power
and the establishment of an order in which student can only exist as object, but rather
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

68

S. KODAMA

calls for the subject-ness of student by interrupting its egocentrism.
For example, in September 2018, 6th grade elementary school students from Kijima
Daira elementary school in Nagano prefecture came to the University of Tokyo and madepresentation of their results of comprehensive learning to University of Tokyo students.
This scene could be regarded as a typical example of learner-centered model which is
popular among active learning boom. But different from TED, the role of lecturer andlistener is not fixed, and every participant was talking, explaining, and questioning witheach other, and different from robot vacuum cleaner, students were not existing as an egological self. They are interrupted from the outside of their own community, and exposed
to other community and other public world. I think it is this point that Biesta’s model ofcitizenship education as focusing on ignorant citizen encounters his rediscovery ofteaching.

4. Some comments
At the last section I will pose some comments to Biesta’s presentation.
My first comment is who takes an initiative of interruption. According to Levinas
in the moment of interruption consciousness is challenged by the face. So subject-ness as
an ignorant citizen is challenged and decentered in response to Other, so initiative is nottaken by subject, but by other person. On the other hand as Biesta wrote in other article(Biesta 2015), Hannah Arendt says that initiative is a key category for the beginning andrenewing of the public world. So in the Arendtian view point only under the condition ofplurality where action is to be understood as a combination of initiatives it is possible foreveryone to act as citizens. So there is an issue of who takes an initiative at the pedagogy
of interruption.
Inspired by Jacques Rancière, Biesta poses the category of teaching as dissensus.
According to Biesta the idea of teaching as dissensus can be said to interrupt a logic ofchild’s development or student growth. If so, teaching as dissensus can be understood as
an example of a breakthrough of pedagogy of interruption which has a kind of problemof the subject of taking initiative. In teaching as dissensus, who takes an initiative is nolonger a major problem. Rather, the problem is the heterogeneity inherent in eachbeginning.
Levinas tends to privilege the precedent nature of others. In contrast, Arendt tends
to privilege the precedent nature of subject with initiatives. The criticism of "imperialism"of the self, brought up by Biesta, and its decentralization are going to get over these
Thematic Research: Rethinking Teaching: Toward the Reconstruction of (Philosophy of) Education

Teaching for the possibility of Ignorant Citizen in the context of Education in Japan69

privileges, and it is at this point that teaching as dissensus and the idea of ignorant citizen
encounter with each other.

References
Hannah Arendt, 1958 The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Gert J.J. Biesta, 2006 Beyond Learning, Paradigm
Gert J.J. Biesta, 2010 Good Education in an Age of Measurement, Paradigm
Gert J.J. Biesta, 2011 Learning Democracy in School and Society, Sense Publishers
Gert J.J. Biesta, 2013 The Beautiful Risk of Education, Paradigm
Gert J.J. Biesta, 2015 “Democracy in the kindergarten：Helping young children to beat home in the world”, in Demokratiske praksiser i barnehagen, Fagbokforlaget
Gert J.J. Biesta, 2017 The Rediscovery of Teaching, Routledge
Gert J.J. Biesta, 2018 “Teaching for the Possibility of Being Taught: World-Centered
Education in an Age of Learning” A paper prepared for presentation at theInternational Symposium, “Rethinking Teaching: Toward the Reconstruction of(Philosophy of) Education” at The ６１st Annual Conference of Philosophy of
Education Society of Japan, Yamanashi Gakuin Junior College,2018.10.7.
Harry Boyte, 2004, Every day Politics, University of Pennsylvania Press
Shigeo Kodama, 2006 “Rethinking Hannah Arendt in the Context of Politics in 1990’s
Japan: Focusing on Arendt’s Critique of Karl Marx,” in Research Monograph:
Studies of Human Development from Birth to Death, Ochanomizu University 21st
COE Program
Shigeo Kodama, 2010, “Book Review: CITIZENSHIP: A VERY SHORTINTRODUCTION, RICHARD BELLAMY (2008)”, in Citizenship Teaching and
Learning, Volume 6 Number 1
Shigeo Kodama, 2014 “Higher Education and Political Citizenship: The Japanese Case”,
in Harry Boyte(ed.), Democracy's Education: Public Work, Citizenship, and the
Future of Colleges and Universities, Vanderbilt Univ Press, 2014.12., pp.221-225

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

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

Freedom, Authority, and the Experience of the Pathos

71

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

72

F. ONO

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

Freedom, Authority, and the Experience of the Pathos

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

74

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

Freedom, Authority, and the Experience of the Pathos

75

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.”

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

76

F. ONO

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

Freedom, Authority, and the Experience of the Pathos

77

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.

References
Agamben, Giorgio (2001) Infanzia e storia. Distruzione dell'esperienza e origine dellastoria, Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore.
Arendt, Hannah (1967) Vita activa oder Vom tätigen Leben, München/Zürich: Piper.
Benveniste, Émile (1969) Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, 2 tomes,
Paris: Minuit ([1973] Indo-European Language and Society, trans. by E. Palmer,
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

78

F. ONO

London: Faber & Faber).
Biesta, Gert J. J. (2016) Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics,
Democracy, London/New York: Routledge.
―――― (2017) The Rediscovery of Teaching, London/New York: Routledge.
―――― (2018) “Teaching for the Possibility of Being Taught: World-Centred
Education in an Age of Learning,” A paper prepared for presentation at theinternational symposium “Rethinking Teaching: Toward the Reconstruction of(Philosophy of) Education,” The 61st Annual Conference of the Philosophy of
Education Society of Japan, 7 October 2018.
Biesta, Gert J. J. and Egéa-Kuehne, Denise (eds.) (2001) Derrida & Education,
London/New York: Routledge.
Buber, Martin (1962) Martin Buber Werke Bd.1, München: Kösel-Verlag/Heidelberg:
Lambert Schneider.
Central Council for Education (2015) Report for Improving the Quality and Abilities of
School Education Teachers, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Scienceand Technology of Japan (MEXT) [in Japanese]
http://www.mext.go.jp/component/b_menu/shingi/toushin/__icsFiles/afieldfile/20
16/01/13/1365896_01.pdf (accessed 2018-10-01)
Foucault, Michel (2001) L'Herméneutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France 19811982, Paris: Seuil/Gallimard.
Foucault, Michel (2009) Le Courage de la vérité. Le gouvernement de soi et des autres.
Cours au Collège de France 1983-1984, Paris: Seuil/Gallimard.
Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe (1986) La poésie comme expérience, Paris: Christian
Bourgois Editeur.
Lévinas, Emmanuel (1990 [1961]) Totalité et infini: essai sur l'extériorité, Paris: Le Livrede Poche.
―――― (2005) Quatre lectures talmudiques, Paris: Les Éditions Minuit.
Munier, Roger (1972) Réponse à une enqête sur l’expérience, in: Mise en page, no 1,
mai 1972, Paris: Éditions Jean-Jacques Pauvert.
Okabe, Mika & Ono, Fumio (eds.) (2019) Kyoikugaku no Patosu-ron-teki Tenkai [ThePatho-logical Turn of Education], Tokyo: The University of Tokyo Press [inJapanese]. (forthcoming)
Ono, Fumio & Okabe, Mika (eds.) (2019) Patosu to Ningen-keisei [Education and
Human Development in the Experience of Pathos], Tokyo: The University of Tokyo
Press [in Japanese]. (forthcoming)
Ono, Fumio (2002) “Kyoiku-tetsugaku ni okeru tasha-kaishaku no giho no kisei ni tsuite:
Thematic Research: Rethinking Teaching: Toward the Reconstruction of (Philosophy of) Education

Freedom, Authority, and the Experience of the Pathos

79

Lévinas to Buber no hikaku wo tohshite [On the Mechanism of Arts of Interpreting
Others in the Philosophy of Education: Lévinas and Buber],” in: Kyoiku-TetsugakuKenkyu [Studies in the Philosophy of Education], Vol.85, pp.59-75 [in Japanese].
―――― (2013) “Poiesis, yowai shiko, Hyperbologique: Heidegger to Lévinas totomoni Standish Jiko-wo-koete wo kangaeru [Poiesis, Weak Thought,
Hyperbologique: Considering P. Standish’s Beyond the Self with Heidegger and
Lévinas],” in: Kyoiku-Tetsugaku-Kenkyu [Studies in the Philosophy of Education],Vol.107, pp.224-226 [in Japanese].
―――― (2015) “On the ‘Ordinary’ Style of Philosophy and the Tradition of the Kyoto
School: A Sketch of Clinical Philosophy and Clinical Education in Postwar Japan,”in: Rinsho-Kyoiku-Ningengaku [Record of Clinical-Philosophical Pedagogy],
Vol.13, pp.56-60.
―――― (2017) Patosu no Chi to Rinsho-Kyoikugaku: Hitori de arukoto to Kyoku
surukoto [Knowledge of Pathos and Clinical-Pedagogy: Being-Alone and Compassion], in: S. Yano & T. Nishihira (eds.) Rinsho-Kyoikugaku [Clinical-Pedagogy](The Teacher-Training Series Vol.3), Tokyo: Kyodo-shuppan, pp.203-228 [inJapanese].
―――― (2018a) In der eigenen Sprache stottern. Über das Philosophieren auf
Japanisch und die Erfahrung des Fremden, in: R. Mattig, M. Mathias, K. Zehbe(hrsg.) Bildung in fremden Sprachen? Pädagogische Perspektiven auf globalisierte
Mehrsprachigkeit, Bielefeld: transkript Verlag, SS.235-256.
―――― (2018b) “Philosophy in the Age of Globalization, But in Which Language?
Translation, or Loving the Experience of Enduring Pathos,” in: Tetsugaku:International Journal of the Philosophical Association of Japan, Vol.2, pp.207-227.
―――― (2018c) “Pathei Mathos to iu keiken no shiso no kanohsei: ima ni mukiai jikan
wo kaeru tameni [On the Experience of Pathei Mathos: Facing the Now-Time ofModerne and Changing the Time],” in: Kindai-Kyoiku-Forum [Forum on Modern
Education], Vol.27, pp.74-85 [in Japanese].
―――― (2018d) The Tragedy of the Messianic Dialectic: Buber’s Novel Gog and
Magog, in: S. B. Shonkoff (ed.) Martin Buber. His Intellectual and Scholarly Legacy,
Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, pp.258-272.
―――― (2018e) Kyoiku ni okeru gijyutsu eno toi to pathos eno toi: moroi bubun ni
tatsu kyoiku-tetsugaku e [The Question of Technique and the Question of Pathos:
Philosophy of Education Standing on the Fragile Ground], in H. Morita & Y.
Matsuura (eds.) Ima Kyoiku to Kyoikugaku wo Toinaosu [Reflecting Education andPedagogy Again: Inquiry and Perspective of Philosophy of Education], Tokyo:
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

80

F. ONO

Toshindo, pp.268-310 [in Japanese].
Sumeragi, Norio (2018) Rinsho-Kyoikugaku 30-Nen [30 Years of Clinical-Pedagogy],
Kyoto: Minerva-shobo [in Japanese].
Wada, Shuji & Sumeragi, Norio (eds.) (1996) Rinsho-Kyoikugaku [Clinical-Pedagogy],
Kyoto: Academia Shuppan [in Japanese].
Wimmer, Klaus-Michael (1988) Der Andere und die Sprache: Vernunftkritik und
Verantwortung, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag.

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

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

Reconsidering the Intersection of Politics and Education:
East Asian Perspectives
Shigeki IZAWA
Nagoya University
Masaki TAKAMIYA
Osaka University of Health and Sport Sciences
Hektor K. T. YAN
City University of Hong Kong
Cheuk-Hang LEUNGThe Chinese University of Hong Kong
Ren-Jie Vincent LIN
National Taiwan University of Sport

Reconsidering the Intersection of Politics and Education
Shigeki IZAWA
Nagoya University
In this roundtable, we would like to further our understanding of political influenceson education and reconsider the politics of education by inviting young educational
philosophers from East Asia. Modern society has fabricated opportunistic fiction
regarding the political neutrality of education. However, education has never been
politically neutral because it has never been able to escape from the political influencesof the times. Instead, the histories of many countries worldwide reveal that education has
been used directly or indirectly as a tool to support an existing political regime.

82

The same can be said regarding the acceptance of educational philosophers such as
Comenius, Rousseau, and Dewey and their impact on educational theories and practices
in Japan (Sohma et al. 2016). Specifically, the acceptance of John Dewey’s educational
ideas in Japan—which have continued to inspire, stimulate, and promote the theoreticaland practical development of Japan’s postwar education—has been directly influenced
by the acting political regimes in different periods (Kamidera 1959). Dewey’s theories
have been interpreted as a progressive or child-centered form of education within the
aforementioned context, and they have been interpreted indifferently regarding politics
to the point of excluding political issues altogether. This seems to imply, paradoxically,that education has not been unrelated to politics.
Further, the relationship between politics and education has always been contentious.
Political intervention in the “internal matters” regarding official knowledge and thecorresponding curriculum is one example that is clearly evidenced by the developmentof the Japanese course of study and the content of history textbooks. Forty-two historicalfigures were designated as mandatory learning for elementary school children when the
curriculum was revised in 1989, and that list remained unchanged after the latest revision
issued in 2017. Selecting the persons to be included in the list caused considerable
controversy at the time. Specifically, Togo Heihachiro is widely known as the famous
Japanese fleet admiral who lifted Japan to victory in the Russo-Japanese War. Despite hisfame, his inclusion as one of the forty-two leading figures to be studied sparked furious
debates (Nakano 2005: 102; cf. Murai 1997: 113-128). Years later, memories of thecontroversy have faded, and the list has managed to garner widespread acceptance.
Nevertheless, this has remained a very political issue as it sharply questioned not only our
historical awareness but also the political dynamics related to the representation of thenation’s history.
After the revision of Japan’s Public Office Election Act, young people over the ageof eighteen gained the right to vote. New guidelines have established the relationshipbetween politics and education from the perspective of political education such as
citizenship education. They shifted the focus regarding educational issues to the kinds ofcontent that should be taught and learned. However, the concept of political education
does not imply that the world of education must be replaced by an arena of politicalstruggles. Further to the debates over how to teach and learn politics, a method tomaintain a certain degree of distance from politics also needs to be reexamined. Likewise,
it is also necessary to evaluate the political nature of political education more critically.
The problem areas of politics and education have intersected many times and seem
destined to cross again. While sociopolitical philosophy considers the aims of education
Round TableReconsidering the Intersection of Politics and Education83

in relation to calls for participatory politics and profound discourse regarding global
capitalism, educational philosophy examines the new mode of politics with emphasis on
moral education or political education. Based on the contexts of educational philosophy
in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, this session attempted to critically review theintersection of such politics and education while raising new challenges and methods toapproach their relationship going forward.
References
Sohma, S. et al., 2016, “Kyoiku Shisoshi No ‘Uramen’ Wo Tou: ‘Koten’ Wa Dou
Yomarete Kona Katta No Ka (The 'Back Side' of History of Educational Thought:
How We Have and Have NOT Read the 'Classics of Education'),” Kindai Kyoiku
Forum (Forum on Modern Education), No.25, 2016, pp.166-172.
Nakano, S., “Shougakkou Rashii Rekishi-Kyoiku (Toward the Elementary School
History Education),” Shakaika Kyoiku (Social Studies), No. 555, 2005, Tokyo:
Meiji-Tosho, p.102.
Kamidera, H. 1959, “The History of Dewey Study in Japan: Mainly on Pedagogic
Studies,” in Nihon Dewey Gakkai (John Dewey Society of Japan), Dewey Kyouiku
Riron No Shomondai: Dewey Tanjyou Hyakunensai Wo Kinen Shite (Problems of
Dewey’s Educational Theory: The Centennial Celebration for Dewey’s Birth),Tokyo: Toe-Shoin, pp.40-44.
Murai, A. 1997, Rekishi Ninshiki To Jyugyo Kaikaku (Perspective of History and Lesson
Improvement), Tokyo: Kyoikushiryo-Syuppannkai.

Money and Power in Bad Genius: a study in the politics of representation
Hektor K. T. YAN
City University of Hong Kong
Bad Genius (2017, directed by Nattawut Poonpiriya) is a Thai movie—a box office
hit in its home country as well as in East Asian countries such as China and Taiwan. Whileit can be seen as belonging to the genre of a heist movie, Bad Genius focuses on a groupof young college students who use a number of ingenious cheating techniques to beat theexamination system. Using this movie as the main example, this presentation looks atsome issues relating to the representation of education.
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 201984

To begin with, this paper makes the assumption that representations in general
involve the exercise of power. To make sense of this claim, I resort to the notion ofsymbolic annihilation: ‘Representation in the fictional world signifies social existence;
absence means symbolic annihilation.’ (George Gerbner and Larry Gross, ‘Living With
Television: The Violence Profile’ (1976), p. 182.) If the denial of social existence togroups such as women and ethnic minorities is a problem, one must also question thedominant way education is depicted in popular culture nowadays. For, schooling andeducation often receive negative portrayals in movies and the media. One may therefore
ask: ‘What are the effects on people’s understanding of education if education isconstantly discredited in various forms of representations?’
Education in Bad Genius is not depicted as a progressive measure that enhances
social mobility. Instead, education in the movie appears to have no intrinsic value: whilestudents see it as a mere means to obtain academic qualifications, teachers use education
as a tool to make money. The main character of the movie, Lynn, is an intelligent girl who
excels in the academic subjects. However, her need to fully develop her academic
potential hinges on factors other than her intelligence. As Lynn’s father has only a modest
income as a teacher, sending Lynn to a prestigious school becomes a financial burden to
her family. This lack of money also means that Lynn’s chance to succeed in the future
depends very much on obtaining a scholarship. As the number of scholarships are very
limited, the movie highlights the fact that bright students such as Lynn are constantly
under the pressure to obtain extra money.
Lynn’s financial difficulties eventually lead her to become part of a team of cheating
students. As the type of cheating undertaken by this team escalates into complex schemesthat involve large number of school pupils, the last section of this presentation centers on
cheating as a moral issue. Although the plan designed by Lynn and her friends succeeds
in allowing many examination candidates to obtain high marks, Lynn’s collaborator Bankis caught by the examination authority during the process and he is expelled from his
school. Eventually Lynn decides to confess to the examination authority: she appears tohave realized that cheating is morally wrong and does not want to be involved in cheating
anymore.
During the roundtable discussion, the focus is mainly on the morality of cheating.
Although Lynn’s confession may resemble an affirmation of what is morally right, I try
to argue that Lynn’s confession does not manage to deal with the fundamental cause of
the problem, namely, inequality. Lynn’s confession does not change the imbalance ofpower that results from extreme wealth inequality: it only makes her situation deteriorate
further. From this perspective, one may say that instead of taking a critical stance towards
Round TableReconsidering the Intersection of Politics and Education

85

the status quo, Bad Genius re-affirms existing inequality and power relationships.

Language Right and the Learning of Chinese in Postcolonial Hong Kong
Cheuk-Hang LEUNGThe Chinese University of Hong Kong
After the change of sovereignty to China in 1997, while the power of English
remains unchallenged – thanks to the neo-liberal economic structure, Hong Kong haseven witnessed a rapid change of its medium of instruction in teaching Chinese – fromusing Cantonese to Putonghua (Mandarin) in primary and secondary schools in recent
years. It raises concerns of further diminishing the language right of the linguistic majority.
Most people in Hong Kong are native Cantonese speakers (speaking Chinese in theform of Cantonese) and thus it is the majority language of the population. In the
educational arena, the medium of instruction in teaching and learning Chinese in primaryand secondary schools was Cantonese before 1997. But in recent years there has been a
new and dominant trend to switch to Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese) in schools,
especially in primary schools. In fact, Cantonese is widely seen as one of the Chinesedialects and de facto the minority language in the context of People’s Republic of China.
It gives pragmatic reason for schools administrators and parents to support the switchfrom Cantonese to Putonghua in learning Chinese in terms of future job opportunities
and economic returns of the students. And, indeed, political correctness should also takea role in contributing this situation, as the Chinese central government views the insert of
Putonghua into civic and educational arenas as part of the project of nation building ofChineseness.
In the field of political philosophy, language right is now the integral part of theoryof justice after the critique of liberalism from communitarianism and multiculturalism inthe past two decades. Maintaining language diversity has become essential issue ofjustice in contemporary democratic countries. People have the rights to use their own
language in the public domain and they should expect to attain similar economic
endowments through the use of their language in work place. It justifies the preservationof minority language and facilitate its use in public domains, government offices, andwork places.
However, language right is different from those conventional liberal rights, such asuniversal suffrage and religious freedom, for which individual citizen could exercise
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 201986

freely once their entitlements have been granted by the authority. Language right is rather
a form of cooperative justice. Language needs to be used in both private and publicdomains in order to sustain its economic and political influence. Nonetheless, there isalways unequal socio-political presence between majority and minority cultures.
Minority citizens thus at least bear social and economic costs of not being familiar withmajority language in the country.
When it comes to a post-colonial Hong Kong, the language issue becomes much
more complicated. Under the political pressure of China, nation-building is the prominent
objective for the regime to deploy public policy in Hong Kong. Education is the frontierof such cultural politics battles. Moreover, at the same time Putonghua has been earned
the status as the more ‘useful language’, together with English, in current economic
climate under the neo-liberal mind set. Upon such context, this presentation examined
linguistic justice beyond the two prominent normative models of language – the ‘nationbuilding’ and ‘language preservation’ under liberalism and explore the possibility ofapplying and reconstructing postcolonial theory with Hong Kong experience.

Ideology, Collective Memory and National Identity in Schooling:
The development of Taiwan history textbooks re-examined
Ren-Jie Vincent LIN
National Taiwan University of Sport
It is always controversial on teaching materials, textbook contents and pedagogiesof the subject of history in Taiwan due to its complicated transformation of the politics
over the past two hundred years. This research is mainly to re-examine the developmentof history textbooks in Taiwan after declaring the martial law of 1987, by the perspectiveof politics of education, with special reference to the concepts of ideology, collective
memory and national identity. Therefore, the key question is that how the national identity
was constructed in post-1949 Taiwan by shaping collective memories on history
textbooks and history teaching implemented by ruling authorities’ ideologies on different
periods. In the beginning, I re-examine and reflect these concepts and rationales ofnational identity, collective memory and ideology by academic works of sociology. After
this, I do the literature review to explore the transformation of national identity in Taiwan
by the related publications and some surveys, such as Taiwan Social Change Survey.
Recently, I begin to expand a new job on this stage. I am collecting different editions
Round TableReconsidering the Intersection of Politics and Education

87of history textbooks of primary and high schools from textbook archives and library of
the Center for Textbook Research, National Academy for Educational Research. Because
it is a huge job, it estimates that I need to spend several months to finish it. At the sametime, I will have my research definitions of national identity and collective memory byfocusing on some significant and concrete items, such as patriotism, Chinese andTaiwanese appeared in history textbooks.
On the next stage, I will search these items, sentences and stories, including
patriotism, ROC, China, Chinese, Taiwan and Taiwanese in history textbooks and thencode them. Then, I will apply the software of Nvivo 11.0 to categorize and generalize therelationship between these key concepts, and argue how government’s ideologies wereshown by history textbooks on different stages in post-1949 Taiwan. By the huge
influence of hidden curriculum by the history teaching, I will analyse how Taiwan’s
government shaped Taiwanese collective memory to highlight the national identity on
different stages by its ideology.
Because of the deeply complicated sovereign status and relationship between China
and Taiwan after 1949, the two ruling governments began to frame their people’s
collective memory and national identity by banking education in schooling, with specialreference to history textbooks and history teaching guided directly by government’s
ideology. Based on the research questions and aims, it could be easily found thesignificant influence of hidden curriculum from history textbooks and the history
teaching in primary and high school in Taiwan when I support my research report.
Simultaneously, it also could be understood the transformation of history textbooks
influenced deeply by Taiwan government’s diplomatic policies on China.

Conclusion
Masaki TAKAMIYA
Osaka University of Health and Sport Sciences
How are politics and education intersected? This roundtable considered the question
by using examples of Asian countries. Three approaches were contemplated to determine
the relationship of politics and education(T. Tamura, M. Matsumoto, & N. Otobe, et al,
Introduction to Political Theory, Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 2017.): (1) an empirical analysis ofpolitical influence in education, (2) inferring educational norms from oughtness in society,and (3) considering what politics in education actually comprises by regarding concepts
E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 201988of conflict and opposition as politics in themselves. If we follow these distinctions, Dr.
Yan’s suggestion was based on the third approach, albeit with a modification to analyze
the politics of representation concerning education. Dr. Leung relied on theories of justiceand post-colonial theories to address language rights in Hong Kong. He analyzed thepolitics of language rights empirically based on normative theories while referencing
political theories beyond those normative theories. In essence, he presented a blended
method devised from elements of all three approaches. Dr. Lin’s contribution was based
primarily on the first approach by analyzing the history of educational politics throughTaiwanese history textbooks.
All three presenters considered politics within the context of educational phenomena.
However, when trying to determine how politics and education are interrelated, wecannot only question education from political perspectives, rather, we must also question
politics from educational perspectives. For example, we can ask how people become
political subjects from the perspective of human formation, such as the ways in whichpeople acquire the political literacy necessary for acquiring citizenship, etc. We should
question education in politics as well as politics in education.

Round Table