What is not Teaching? Levinassian Notes on Maieutics and Contemporary Education

Abstract

The paper orbits around Lévinas’ idea of teaching as opposite to Socratic maieutic method. According to the phenomenologist, pursuing only the goal of drawing out of the students what is already contained in them relegates teaching to a secondary role and, first and foremost, underlies an anthropology centered on the ego and not on the relationship. The aim of the paper is to show how this anthropology is unable to respond to many “emergencies” of contemporary education.

Keywords

• teaching
• phenomenological pedagogy
• philosophy of education
• relationship
• ethics