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Towards an Ontological Turn in Music Education with Heidegger’s Philosophy of Being and His Notion of Releasement

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Philosophy of Music Education Challenged: Heideggerian Inspirations

Part of the book series: Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education ((LAAE,volume 15))

Abstract

This chapter discusses the influence of the current European educational policy on music education in some Scandinavian countries and in Germany in light of Heidegger’s philosophy of being and his critique of technology. Heidegger’s genealogical history of nihilism asserts that the individual’s relation to reality has developed from “letting beings be” to “mastery” and “control.” In the current paradigm of enframing, we increasingly deal with objects, including ourselves, as resources to be exploited. This has consequences of direct relevance to music education, in relation to the aspect of musical Bildung, to questions concerning the artistic qualities of music and to the existential role of music in the lives of individuals. This chapter discusses a possible ontological turn in music education, considering the current paradigm. Such a turn includes the move from an understanding of Bildung as the transfer of truth as veritas or correctness, into an understanding of Bildung as aletheia or the uncovering of truth. Since art to Heidegger is a happening of truth similar to the happening of truth as aletheia, music as an arts-based subject assumes a unique role among the other school subjects. As a result, a renewed focus on the significance of musical experiences may be an appropriate response to the oblivion-of-being in music education.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    What in this context holds true for music education in general applies to music teacher education as well. Both fields are equally affected by the paradigmatic changes. The article addresses and brings relevant examples from both fields, even though music teacher education is most often addressed, but will for the sake of convenience mainly just use the expression music education.

  2. 2.

    The process of enframing is in Heidegger’s view ambivalent, as it at the same time contains “the saving power,” the key for an exit out of a solely technical worldview (Heidegger 2011b; Pio 2012: 266). In the Spiegel-Interview (1976), he says: “My conviction is that only in the same place where the modern technical world took its origin can we also prepare a conversion (Umkehr) of it” (Heidegger 1976).

  3. 3.

    Pio objects that the criticism of instrumentalism itself is idealistic in that it builds on the premise of a subject-object-duality, which Heidegger criticizes. For Heidegger, the man of the age of technology is always-already part of the technological being-in-the-world, whether he acts instrumentalistic or not: “Self-assertive man, whether or not he knows and wills it as an individual, is the functionary of technology” (Heidegger 2001: 113, Pio 2012: 221). I still choose to mention the similar agendas of Skjervheim’s and Heidegger’s notions, especially the criticism of calculative thinking.

  4. 4.

    Hansen’s and Pio’s educational models differ in that Pio places the “System” dimension as an external framework condition, while Hansen includes this as one of the four “voices” affecting higher education. Additionally, Pio emphasizes more clearly the tensions between the subject-specific and pedagogical dimensions in his model.

  5. 5.

    Already this sentence contains this ambivalence, as the same power (technicity) that brings about that Bildung is coming to an end, at the same time “will some day open the door that leads to what is essential”–namely the pondering on the essence of technology, that contains the saving power that initiates the new, non-technical mode of being in the world (Heidegger 2011b: 238).

  6. 6.

    The notion of “intrinsic value of music” should here be understood in terms of being a “unique potential for music in human life,” as stimulating, “meaning-creating reflection” with “importance of art for everyone,” and not as “self-sufficiency of art” as a type of higher, independent value inherent in musical objects “separated from the living subject” (Pio and Varkøy 2012: 105ff).

  7. 7.

    Graduiertenkolleg Ästhetische Bildung, Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaft der Universität Hamburg 1991–2000. See also:

    http://www.forschungsbericht.uni-hamburg.de/Forber8/aforber/e32/e32046/b32046.htm

  8. 8.

    Heidegger also emphasizes the transformative function of Bildung: “(…) the essence of paideia does not consist in merely pouring knowledge into the unprepared soul as if it were a container held out empty and waiting. On the contrary, real formation [Echte Bildung] lays hold of the soul itself and transforms it in its entirety by first of all leading us to the place of our essential being and accustoming us to it.” (Heidegger 1998a: 167).

  9. 9.

    I choose here to use Dreyfus’ translation of the German word Sinn into sense, instead of the translation into meaning, which is the word used in Being and Time. Dreyfus remarks that sentences such as “the meaning of being” sound too definitional (Dreyfus 1991: xii).

  10. 10.

    Even in the Spiegel-Interview, Heidegger has to correct his interviewers for understanding his critique of technology too concretely (Heidegger 1976: 214).

  11. 11.

    Comportment is Heidegger’s own term for Husserl’s intentionality (Dreyfus 1991: 51).

  12. 12.

    The twofold listening is supported by two quotations by Heidegger. The first ist identical with the citation in footnote 8, the second reads as follows: “To learn means to make everything we do answer to what essentials address themselves to us at a given time.” (Heidegger 1968: 14).

  13. 13.

    Heidegger’s concern in his later works is usually not how the individual should live in a nihilistic culture, rather he is interested in the possibility of saving the culture as a whole. In the treatment of his notion of releasement, however, the individual is considered to be able to attain an openness to a possible change in its understanding of being as well (Dreyfus 1991: 339 f; Heidegger 1969).

  14. 14.

    Hansen’s approach to existential Bildung, built on the pedagogical concept of Wonder, also includes a reflection on the “unsolvable mystery” that life experiences often represent (Hansen 2011: 255).

  15. 15.

    See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autochthon_(ancient_Greece).

  16. 16.

    This gives associations to Frede V. Nielsen’s dividing of the school subject music into its ars- and scientia–dimensions (Nielsen 1998: 110).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, 4, St. Olavs plass, N-0130, Oslo, Norway

    Hanne Fossum

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  1. Hanne Fossum
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  1. Dept. of Educ., Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Frederik Pio

  2. Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo, Norway

    Øivind Varkøy

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Fossum, H. (2015). Towards an Ontological Turn in Music Education with Heidegger’s Philosophy of Being and His Notion of Releasement . In: Pio, F., Varkøy, Ø. (eds) Philosophy of Music Education Challenged: Heideggerian Inspirations. Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9319-3_5

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