The Meaning of Life in Heidegger’s Philosophical Pedagogy

Abstract

In this article, we inquire into the concept of meaning in pedagogy through Heidegger’s philosophy. Since metaphysical systems reduce the Being of humans, due to the dominance of subjectivist and worldlessness views, they tend to suffer from the crisis of nihilism, which has made its way into various ontological sciences, especially pedagogy. In this article, we tackle the elements that culminated in such meaninglessness in pedagogy in terms of dualism, worldlessness, absence of existentials, and finally the posteriority of Eros and Pathos to Logos. Now, since the philosophies of Nietzsche and Heidegger extensively deal with the issue of meaning, and in particular, Heidegger in Being and Time grapples with the concept of the meaning of Being by analyzing existentials, here we decided to discuss meaning by drawing on the existentials of understanding and attunement, and from this perspective, we look for a way out of the crisis of nihilism in pedagogy. Discussion of the meaning of being-in-the-world and the prior precedence of Eros over cognition and Logos is also helpful for overcoming the crisisof nihilism in pedagogy. That is, if pathos, eros, and the existentials of understanding and attunement are taken seriously in pedagogy, then pedagogical meaninglessness might be resisted by appealing to worldlessness and subjectivism. In fact, the revolution that sparked in Heidegger’s philosophy, in which pathos was deemed prior to logos and the question of meaning was rendered possible by turning to existentials, opened the way for a pedagogy based on existentials.

Keywords

• existentials
• attunement
• understanding
• meaning of being
• pedagogy