Matthew Kruger-Ross - What can Heidegger teach us? After the Black Notebooks

This episode of our podcast is a paper from Matthew Kruger-Ross (West Chester University of Pennsylvania). This recording comes from the ‘JBSP 50th Anniversary Conference: On the History of Being – After the Black Notebooks’ (2019) which was held in celebration of fifty years of the ‘Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology’.

ABSTRACT: Martin Heidegger, a remarkable philosopher who turned phenomenology upside down, was also a committed teacher for almost six decades. An extended reflection on teaching as a manner and way of inspiring further philosophical reflection remains an unattended narrative within philosophical scholarship. To be sure, in addition to our treatises and manuscripts, our livelihood as philosophers depend on our ability to inspire future philosophers via our lectures and pedagogical conversations and relations in our professional capacities as teachers. How often do we allow others to explore our innermost thoughts and planning document as we craft our thinking and teaching? The Schwarze Hefte provide a unique portal into Heidegger the teacher between 1931 and 1943, based on the existing published notebooks into English. Heidegger’s reflections on education, teaching, learning, students, and instruction are chronicled in this proposed manuscript devoted to extending existing scholarships into Heidegger and the philosophical study of education. Such work promises to extend existing analyses relevant to Heidegger’s thinking of meditative thinking (as a contrast to calculative thinking), historiological ways of thinking and philosophizing, and the role of education in learning to think. Who is the “elementary school teacher” that Heidegger references so often in the Notebooks to provide a counterweight to his philosophical arguments related to thinking? This presentation and paper propose to address this exact gap in the conversation surrounding Heidegger and teaching, learning, and education, broadly considered.

‘Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology: Special Issue – Heidegger and the Black Notebooks’ (Volume 51, Issue 2, 2020). Other papers presented at JBSP 50th Anniversary Conference have been reworked and published as essays in this special edition: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/jbsp-volume-51-issue-two-2020-heidegger-special-issue/

The ‘JBSP 50th Anniversary Conference: On the History of Being – After the Black Notebooks’ (2019) celebrated 50 years of the journal. The British Society for Phenomenology held a three-day conference at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester, UK from 31 May to 2 June, 2019. The aim of the event was to examine the contribution of Heidegger’s Schwarze Hefte (Black Notebooks) to an understanding of the question of the history of being: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/anniversary-conference-2019/

The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/