Heidegger, Quality, Excellence: The Currency of Teaching

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Some thoughts by the tánaiste (deputy leader of the government), Mary Harney, are instructive here: ‘I have to say we have a new breed of university president now […] many of them are from the same background […] they have a scientific background which is wonderful.’ Complaining that academics are timewasters who do not care for what they do as they have permanent jobs, she outlines how these presidents will bring the new dawn: ‘Gerry Wrixon (University College Cork [hereafter UCC] president, 2000‐) is right, and I agree totally with him on the need to buy into the new vision of excellence and of everybody being accountable’ (both statements in ‘A New Breed of President’, UCC News [September 2004], p.1). Universities have been isolated from work: ‘we need a lot of reform in the university structure and how people are awarded tenure […] keeping people in touch with the real world […] and not just working for industry here, but working for industry globally’ (p.2). How is this going to happen? ‘What we want is a powerful Dáil/Oireachtas [parliamentary] Committee that will scrutinize what is happening, both from a policy perspective and an expenditure perspective’ (p.2). You would be forgiven for thinking Ireland is in a disastrous state, with vast unemployment and poverty ravaging the land, but oddly enough, even from an instrumentalist perspective, this supposedly malfunctioning education system has assisted enormous economic growth over a long period. 2. Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1989); De l’esprit: Heidegger et la question (Paris: Flammarion, 1990). 3. Martin Heidegger, ‘The Self‐Assertion of the German University’, in The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader, ed. Richard Wolin (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1993), pp.29–39 (p.37). ‘Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universität’, in Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 16 (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 2000), pp.107–17. 4. Martin Heidegger, ‘The University in the New Reich’, in The Heidegger Controversy, ed. Richard Wolin, pp.43–5. 5. Éamonn Sweeney, ‘The Challenge of Managing Change in a University’, in University College Cork as a Learning Organisation, ed. Áine Hyland (University College Cork, 2004), pp.134–42 (pp.134–5). UCC president Wrixon actually takes credit from creating a sense of crisis: writing of the ‘challenges and changes of the last four years’ (i.e. his tenure) and ‘UCC facing a period of enormous and unprecedented change’ (Wrixon, ‘Foreword’, in Hyland [ed], p.4). He could have added ‘unwarranted’. The Irish government funds such self‐publication handsomely. 6. See ‘Only a God Can Save Us: Der Spiegel's Interview with Martin Heidegger’, in The Heidegger Controversy, ed. Richard Wolin, pp.91–116. The interview took place in 1966, but was only published after his death, in 1976. 7. For a useful summation and investigation of the question of how Heidegger's relation to the university in the context of Nazism has been understood, see Iain Thompson, ‘Heidegger and the Politics of the University’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 41:4 (2003), pp.515–42. For a sense of how Heidegger's relation to Nazism has been dealt with, see Richard Wolin, ed, The Heidegger Controversy; and Günther Neske and Emile Kettering eds, Martin Heidegger and National Socialism: Questions and Answers (New York: Paragon House, 1990). 8. See Martin Heidegger, ‘Only a God Can Save Us’, pp.97–101. Whilst it is in his interest to emphasize certain actions, or even to fabricate a retrospective position of defiance, see also François Fédier, ‘Revenir à plus de décence’, in Martin Heidegger, Écrits politiques, 1933–1966 (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), pp.9–96, and pp.81–3 in particular, on his very specific refusals to carry out Nazi policies. 9. Derrida, Of Spirit, p.39, trans. slightly modified. Heidegger is happy enough to use the vocabulary of this ideology though: ‘the forces that are rooted in the soil and blood of a Volk’ (‘Self‐Assertion’, pp.33–4); ‘seiner erd‐ und bluthaften Kräfte’ (Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 16, p.112). 10. Martin Heidegger, ‘Self‐Assertion’, pp.30–1. 11. ‘L'université allemande envers et contre tout elle‐même’, in Martin Heidegger, Écrits politiques, pp.97–110. 12. ‘Self‐Assertion’, p.34 [Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 16, p.113]. 13. ‘Self‐Assertion’, p.34. 14. ‘Self‐Assertion’, p.34. 15. ‘Self‐Assertion’, p.35 [Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 16, p.114]. 16. For further references to this view of science, see Thompson, ‘Heidegger and the Politics of the University’, p.531. 17. ‘Self‐Assertion’, p.30 and p.35 [Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 16, p.108 and p.114]. 18. ‘Self‐Assertion’, p.29. 19. Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 16, p.107. Derrida picks up on the word ‘Gepräge’ [stamp] to note that the mark is always connected with force (Of Spirit, p.34; De l’esprit, p.47). The stamp that conveys authenticity is a central part of the non‐concepts of ‘quality’ and ‘excellence’. 20. ‘Self‐Assertion’, p.34 [Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 16, p.112]. 21. ‘Self‐Assertion’, p.37 [Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 16, p.115]. 22. Other things listed in dictionaries as capable of being ‘echt’ are diamond, leather, silk, Burgundy wine, pearls, Persian carpet, Rembrandt, stone, crystal glasses, cream, blonde. 23. See Martin Heidegger, Écrits politiques, p.107, for example. 24. ‘National Socialist Education’, in The Heidegger Controversy, ed. Richard Wolin, pp.55–60 (p.58); ‘Zur Eröffnung der Schulungskurse für die Notstandarbeiter der Stadt an der Universität’, Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 16, pp. 232–7 (p.235). Without wishing to absolve Heidegger from his clear initial support for Hitler and Nazism, there are clear issues in how the texts of the 1930s are presented in this volume – they are selective, they over‐emphasize a word which carries, since Nazism, a sinister and purely racialist resonance (Volk), and in this case, a highly directive title is imposed to emphasize (or perhaps we should say exaggerate?) Heidegger's actual position in relation to Nazism. 25. Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 16, p.237. ‘True strength’ in ‘National Socialist Education’ (p.60), ‘sa force de bon aloi’ in Écrits politiques (p.141). 26. Martin Heidegger, ‘Wege zur Aussprache’, in Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 13 (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983), pp.15–21 (p.15). 27. ‘Philosophy is knowledge without immediate utility, but nonetheless the ultimate knowledge of the essence of things. The essence of Being remains that which is most worthy of questioning’ [‘Philosophie ist das unmittelbar nutzlose, aber gleichwohl herrschaftliche Wissen vom Wesen der Dinge. Das Wesen des Seienden bleibt jederzeit das Frag‐würdigste’ (Heidegger, ‘Wege zur Aussprache’, p.18)]. 28. ‘Self‐Assertion’, p.32 [Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 16, p.110]. 29. ‘Self‐Assertion’, p.34 [Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 16, p.113]. 30. ‘Der deutsche Student als Arbeiter’, Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 16, pp.198–208 (p.201). 31. In the world of ‘teaching excellence’, there is a shadow of this questioning, as the teacher ‘reflects’ on his or her practice (which apparently nobody ever did before), often through compiling a teaching portfolio. This ‘reflection’ though is not a questioning as Heidegger envisaged it. In this new world, research is frowned upon, unless it is a ‘scholarship of teaching’. Hyland writes that ‘a key element of learning organisations is that practitioners are themselves enquirers, rather than passive recipients of the expertise of other researchers’ (‘Introduction’, in Hyland [ed], pp.5–9 (p.5)). This is a bizarre view of research, but it is the ‘enquiring’ that interests me here. This enquiry (about ‘my’ practice, conducted according to Carnegie Foundation ideology) is a substitute for questioning, a turning away from questioning that doubles back and takes the place of that Heideggerian questioning. The term ‘learning organisation’, surprisingly, does not refer to the university's business of teaching and research, but its capacity to learn about itself. 32. Martin Heidegger, ‘Die Bedrohung der Wissenschaft’, in Zur philosophischen Aktualität Heideggers, ed. Dietrich Papenfuss and Otto Pöggler, pp.5–27 (p.9); Heidegger, ‘La menace qui pèse sur la science’, in Écrits politiques, pp.167–92. ‘Wissen’ and variants are much closer to the French ‘savoir’ which partially includes science but also knowing in a wider sense. 33. Martin Heidegger, ‘Die Bedrohung’, p.10. 34. ‘Gang und Gäbe’ (‘Die Bedrohung’, p.19). 35. Martin Heidegger, ‘Die Bedrohung’, p.21. 36. Karl Marx, Capital Vol I (London: Penguin, 1976), p. 205. 37. Bettie Higgs, ‘The Reflective Co‐ordinator’, in Hyland [ed], pp.27–30 (p.29). 38. As I write this, one of the vice‐presidents of UCC has sent an email, to all staff, admonishing those who criticize ‘blackboard’ software's usefulness, without having attended the correct fora where this would be ‘debated’ – and the correct response, no doubt, achieved. 39. Bettie Higgs, ‘The Reflective Co‐ordinator’, p.29. 40. Bettie Higgs, ‘The Reflective Co‐ordinator’, p.29. The positing of a university in crisis is only the prelude to resolving that crisis through our soon‐to‐be‐unified will: ‘There is an excitement about teaching in UCC [due to awards for excellence, participation in ‘teaching and learning’ seminars that started out as voluntary and are now key for promotions]. The ripples that were started in 2001 have become a mini tidal wave, washing over the institution. Staff [the believers] are leading the changes themselves, and everyone has something to offer and something to gain. It is clear that there is no going back’ (Higgs, ‘The Reflective Co‐ordinator’, p.30). The enthusiastic rallying call ends in a note of clear menace, with, unspoken, the prospect of people having something to lose. Higgs is not simply describing something that has occurred in UCC; she is part of what Graham Allen has noted about the ‘nowness’, the call for action now, that pervades the scholarship of teaching literature. In the perpetual ‘now’ of crisis and self‐analysis, it (the ‘scholarship of teaching’ culture) can congratulate itself on its gains, and celebrate its future progress (Graham Allen, ‘You Are Here. The Time of Teaching’, in Language – Text – Bildung/ Sprache – Text – Bildung: Essays in Honour of Beate Dreike/Essays für Beate Dreike, ed. Andreas Stuhlmann, Patrick Studer and Gert Hofmann (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2005), pp. 233–49 (p.235). 41. In Heidegger's period as rector of the University of Freiburg, attempts were made to get academics involved in labour camps, and workers into the universities – a development of which Heidegger seems to have been strongly in favour (see ‘The Call to the Labour Service’, in Wolin [ed], pp.53–5, ‘National Socialist Education’ and also his call to the labour service ‘Der Ruf zum Arbeitsdienst’, Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 16, pp.238–9, among others). 42. Mary Lawlor, of Fás, email communication, 29/04/04. 43. Not everyone will be eligible, not everyone's excellence is acceptable to the Empire – as seen in the 1936 Olympics. 44. It is infinitely easier and more valuable to police the employed, who often welcome the chance to be disciplined, than the unemployed. As Foucault told us in Discipline and Punish (London: Allen Lane, 1977), surveillance and control are only marginally about the outsiders, the criminals and delinquents. 45. Mary Lawlor, Fás, email communication, 29/04/04. 46. Freudians will of course enjoy this figure, but should be aware it is parodic, para‐Freudian. In a figure of so many reversals, it could even be seen as representing a ‘potency complex’. 47. Martin Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in Basic Writings (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1993), pp.143–202 (p.170). The text derives from lectures in 1935–36. 48. Martin Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, p.167. Independence as total entanglement, but where the entanglement already undoes itself.