Introduction: Reconnecting with Existentialism in an Age of Human Capital

Abstract

At the end of the 1950s Otto Bollnow connected existential philosophy with education, and the expression existential education was later used by people such as Morris (1966), Segal (1998), and Maclaren (2008). Through this special issue we hope to contribute to the development of the concept of existential education and to an understanding of how existential education may be integrated into a general educational theory. Our point of departure when it comes to the definition of the concept of existential education is the article Kierkegaard, seduction, and existential education (Saeverot 2011, pp. 559–560). One of the key points that was stated there was that human beings do not possess an inner, objective truth. Thus existential education is not about obtaining objective truth, it is rather a matter of obtaining subjective truth. A premise of subjective truth is that one can never force upon another a meaning, persuasion or belief. The student must rather appropriate the existential communication from the teacher, make it into something subjective and personal, not only in order to think differently, but to start acting differently as well. Thus the notion of existential education, and this we are about to argue in more detail, stands in sharp contrast to the human capital theory, which is spreading in the current political and educational landscape. Take, for example, the modern knowledge society—in which knowledge is understood as a commodity that shall be converted for the best of community (Barnett 1994, p. 48). Therein, the modern employer provides, among other things, courses on motivation and well-being. The goal here is not only to improve the employee’s motivation and well-being, but also to reduce absenteeism, and—not the