Behind and Beyond Self-Mastery: Risk, Vulnerability, and Becoming Through Dewey and Heidegger

In the last two decades, a decisive anti-foundationalist turn has emerged in educational philosophy and theory. With such a shift, both the possibility and the desirability to conceive of educational processes and practices in terms of mastery and predictability has been challenged. In this paper, by locating my work on such an anti-foundationalist horizon and by staging a comparison between Dewey and Heidegger, I wish to frame the issue in terms of what is behind and what is beyond the detached and self-assured subject that is supposed to found the kind of managerial frameworks that dominate educational practice worldwide. Specifically, it is my contention that for both Heidegger and Dewey, we are, on the one hand, vulnerable from the very beginning, delivered to an uncanny and uncertain condition; even knowledge is dependent upon a wider, non-discursive context. On the other hand, such an uncanniness and dependency, rather than flowing in some nihilistic defeat of educational purposes, puts radical responsibility on the side of the subject. For both Dewey and Heidegger, being a subject means being-with-others while transcending and advancing one’s boundaries. The notion of education that will emerge through the comparison between Dewey and Heidegger is a type of both subtraction and overstepping, a type of event that we cannot manage, and yet requires our attention, our educational effort in dealing with it, in loading it upon ourselves, thus reconsidering our existence.