Heidegger's Interpretation of Aristotle's Phronesis and its Implications in Education

Document Type : پژوهشی

Authors

• Faramarz Muhammadipouya ¹
• Poorya Aeini ²

¹ Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran

² Master's student in History and Philosophy of Education, Faculty of Humanities, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran

10.22067/fedu.2024.82598.1271

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to explain Heidegger's interpretation of Aristotelian Phronesis and the educational implications based on it. Heidegger considers metaphysics to be a deviation in human thinking, which separated the theoretical from the concrete and practical sphere of human existence and gave priority to it. This deviation has determined all human relationships, including education, which prevents the realization of the original human existence. Heidegger refers to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and interprets the five epistemic states of the human soul with an ontological perspective. Heidegger, unlike Aristotle, believes in the superiority of phronesis as a way of human existence, looking at his concrete sphere, over other aspects. The role of Francis can be seen in Heidegger's discussions about "the meaning of Being", "truth", "Being-in-the-world" and "Dasein". Based on this, the results of analogical reasoning and practical analogy, which have a special place in studies related to education, lose their validity as absolute and certain facts. In real education and training, instead of teaching what is known, the teacher teaches self-learning and teaches them with the position of his inherent being. The authentic human society is open to different possibilities of educational mechanisms and does not consider any situation as the ultimate possibility. As the ultimate level of metaphysical thinking, "Geshtel" reduces everything, including humans, to "resources", and the function of learning theories and curriculum is to make these resources more productive in line with economic interests. Also, Heidegger's thinking provides many possibilities for the development of new conceptualism in the curriculum.
Keywords: Heidegger; Phronesis; Aristotle; Education
 
Synopsis
According to Heidegger, this neglect of “Being”, which prevailed in the tradition of Western thought from Plato to Nietzsche, has created the set of sciences and human relationships in such a way that the relationship between man and the world has been reduced to the concept of "subject" versus "object". This has caused a crisis for contemporary man, which Heidegger interprets as the crisis of "homelessness". That is, man is separated from his concrete life context, and has forgotten his true way of being (Khatami, 2005, p. 52). The emergence of such a situation in the ontological field shows its effects in different fields of science and human activities. Among all these activities, education has a special place that Heidegger himself has paid attention to, and considers it to be deeply connected with the "meaning of Being" (Heidegger, 2002, p. 35). To deal with it, Heidegger looks at a point in the history of philosophy where for the first time the separation of opinion from action and the precedence of the former over the latter was conceptualized; It means Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. In addition, Heidegger found possibilities in these concepts and analyzes of Aristotle, by means of which he could introduce a new plan in philosophy (Khatami, 2005, pp. 23-24). In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle considers the human soul to have five intellectual virtues: Techne or practical ability, episteme or scientific knowledge, nous or intuitive reason, sophia or theoretical wisdom, and phronesis or practical wisdom (Aristotle, 2021, p. 1139b).
Heidegger criticizes all philosophical systems for the fact that they have reduced human existence to the status of a theory which is only one of her existential fields (Heydari, 2009, p. 48). He considers this reduction to be a serious obstacle on the way to the originality of man in his individuality. Therefore, what classical philosophical approaches and systems do in education is to reduce personal choices and individual characteristics and create a mechanism to "standardize" human beings. Approaches based on traditional metaphysics in the form of curricula and different learning theories have consequences such as impersonalizing the relationship between teacher and student, spreading the culture of imitation, turning the learner into a quantifiable cognitive object, and the talent of people is only Pre-determined criteria and criteria are measured using standardized tests, it leads the learner to be the same as others and... (Gutek, 2019, pp. 167-173).
Aristotle divides the human soul into two parts, wise and non-wise, each of which has two components. Accordingly, there are two types of intellectual virtues: theoretical wisdom and practical wisdom. The first one operates in the field of unchanging necessary facts, and the second one operates in the field of changing possible facts. The function of both types of wisdom is to know the truth. Aristotle says that there are five states by which the soul can reach the truth: practical ability [skill, art], scientific knowledge or science, practical wisdom [phronesis], theoretical wisdom [understanding, philosophy], and intuitive reason (Aristotle, 2021, p. 1139b); These five virtues can be separated into two levels according to their relationship with the wise human soul; On the side of Sophia, Episteme, and Nous, of course, Sophia itself is a combination of the other two (Aristotle, 2021, p. 1141b) And on the other side are Phronesis and Tekhneh (with a lower status than Phronesis).
In his philosophy, Heidegger sought to revive the original meaning of truth, and through this concern, he refers to Aristotle and his Nicomachean ethics. Although Nicomachean ethics has moral and epistemological dignity for Aristotle, Heidegger adopts a completely ontological interpretation of Aristotle's concepts, especially the rational virtues in the 6th and 10th books, in the direction of "self-building" from it. For Heidegger, Aristotle's five rational virtues are interpreted as a part of the revelation of the truth and the un-concealment of the ‘Being’ (Kamali, 2019, p. 72). Aristotle considered Sophia to be the highest state of the human soul; But for Heidegger, phronesis is the most important situation in the revelation of being from Dasein. In other words, Heidegger, unlike Aristotle, who considered the highest form of man's encounter with the world to be theoretical, believes that man primarily and originally has a practical, practical, and instrumental relationship with the world (Heidegger, 2001, pp. 69-70). In addition, it should be emphasized that Heidegger clearly shows that he does not fundamentally believe in the separation of opinion and action, or dual worlds in the way that Plato and Aristotle were the founders of it in the history of philosophy, and strongly seeks to negate it. Therefore, against the idea of man as a "rational animal" or "subject", Heidegger proposes an idea that again contains an emphasis on the practical and concrete sphere on the one hand and the inherent unity of man with the world on the other hand; "Being-in-the-world". He deliberately writes this phrase in this way to highlight its unitary and integrated structure. Dasein's being in the world is indivisible (Heidegger, 2001, pp. 169-170).
Heidegger's approach is that the most fundamental area from which all human thoughts and decisions originate is not only not clearly understandable, but basically "ambiguous" and confusing. In addition, according to Heidegger, the basis of any comprehensibility for humans is a matter of "non-conceptual" interaction (Dreyfus, 2020, p. 11). Therefore, it is not possible to imagine clear and explicit statements as absolute and transhistorical foundations, and based on that, start deducing theories and fixed styles for action and action. If the perception of the human being is "dasein" and not "rational animal", it means that it has no essential determination and is open to different possibilities of its "being". Therefore, it is not possible to have a basis and principles based on pure theory for his nature, nor goals as a form and nature determined in the direction of his placement in them. In its collective horizon, Dasein is aware of the fact that various mechanisms that have been organized historically to meet human needs, in their current state, are not the ultimate state and possibility, and can be in other ways as well. The mechanism that has appeared today in the form of various organizations and institutions, in principle, it is possible that it will be revealed in another way. For example, the possibility that education is completely separated from the school-oriented structure and emerges in another way.
In Gestel-based education and training, it is such that, on the one hand, the learners consider the world only as resources for exploitation, and their learning is only in the direction of acquiring knowledge and techniques to be more productive from the resources, on the other hand, the learners themselves and even the teachers as well human resources" (Heidegger, 1977, p. 18). They are considered to be productive in line with the established relationships and objectives. Therefore, the theories of learning, evaluation systems, and curricula are also focused on this issue. Learning theories such as behaviorism, cognitive theory, situational learning theory, etc., despite their major differences, are all based on a subjective view (Hodge, 2022, pp. 155-171). And therefore, their practical consequences in education are ultimately aimed at making human resources more productive.

Keywords

• Heidegger
• Phronesis
• Aristotle
• Education

Main Subjects

• Educational Philosophy

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