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Musings of Heidegger. Arts Education and the Mall as a ‘Debased’ (Dreyfus) Work of Art

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Book cover Philosophy of Music Education Challenged: Heideggerian Inspirations

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

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Abstract

The article starts by investigating the phenomenology of artworks using Heidegger’s notion of Seinsgeschichte (history-of-being) as a point of departure. Three different architectural structures from different epochs are juxtaposed (the temple, the cathedral, and the mall). The readings of these three structures are used as a prism to arrive at an interpretation of what we are currently in the process of becoming in our relation to artworks in general. From here the article moves on to discuss such themes as commitment, truth and school culture in the way such categories can currently be disclosed in an arts education context. Connecting such diverse categories as The Acropolis, St. John the Baptist and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit with the theme of teacher authenticity, the article offers a fresh account of the challenges currently being faced within the broad field of arts education.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Hölderlin ‘sings’ his poetry in the shape of ‘hymns’ (Heidegger 1944, pp. 169, 171, 179). And Heidegger talks about Hölderlin’s (Tonart) ‘key’ (p. 180). This suggests that in Heidegger’s reading of Hölderlin the sonorous sound matter of tone is ontologized, in a way where it works as ether or as a fugue (Fuge) shaping the fourfold and disclosing its inner holism as a manifestation of Hölderlin’s Innigkeit, which designates how everything contains more than itself. The fourfold of the world (das Geviert) is thus described as a song (Gesang): “Vier Stimmen sind es, die tönen” (op. cit., s. 170). These four voices are yielded into a belonging in which the center that unites them makes up a (Fuge) fugue (op. cit., s. 179). As sounding voices they are as such yielded into an unending relation.

  2. 2.

    It should be mentioned here that Gadamer has founded a form of philosophical hermeneutics which offers these artworks the possibility of melting into a contemporary horizon. In Gadamer’s conception, artworks can dissolve their object character as they are handed down from one epoch to the next (Ehrenforth 1971).

  3. 3.

    A labyrinth making you feel like Theseus fumbling your way ahead. The difference here is that the red thread of Ariadne is unfortunately missing this time. But the Taurus is still there. Ever waiting for the rendezvous (for instance in the form of your financial adviser monitoring your spending and potentially closing down your credit card).

  4. 4.

    Technical rationality is characterized by its focus on endless optimization and unending development (lifelong learning through competence development), cf. Illeris and Berri 2005.

  5. 5.

    It should be underlined that what is described here does not remotely resemble the existential oriented ‘care of the self’ promoted by the late Michel Foucault (cf. Foucault 1984, pp. 281f.). A comparative approach to this theme, however, cannot be unfolded here.

  6. 6.

    On privatization see Pio 2009a, pp. 131 f.; and 2009b.

  7. 7.

    Cf. Heideggers Die Ursprung des Kunstwerkes.

  8. 8.

    Heidegger makes the point that the modern subject as ‘a mental-autonomous entity’ would stand in a completely alienated relation to the horizon of Greek Antiquity as to the question of what a human being is; cf. Pio 2012, p. 195.

  9. 9.

    See Pio 2012, sections A and B for a description of Heidegger’s critique of this dualism. There is a challenge here of clarifying the difference between the position of Husserlian phenomenology and social constructivist approaches when the relation between artwork and subject is determined, cf. Nielsen 2000.

  10. 10.

    On Luhmann’s concept of ‘self-reference’, see Luhmann 1987, p. 57.

  11. 11.

    Heidegger’s distinction between earth and world is discussed elsewhere in this book.

  12. 12.

    Julian Young claims that there is no such communal space today (Young 2004, p. 121).

  13. 13.

    See also the music psychology of Ernst Kurth, in which the sound material is described as a ‘stream of energy or vigour’ (Kraftstrom). The music is thus incarnated as a dynamic force deeply inspired from Schopenhauer’s ‘will of the world’. See Kurth 1947, p. 83.

  14. 14.

    It is emphasized by Heidegger that what is closest to us is also the hardest to ‘see’ (i.e. to distinguish and decipher), cf. Pio 2012, pp. 55–57.

  15. 15.

    I do not wish to level the distinction between the great Acropolis and the anonymous Mall. But within Heidegger’s history-of-being (Seinsgeschichte), I am obliged to draw a parallel between the epochs in which these two architectural structures belong.

  16. 16.

    Translated to english: Where there is danger / the saving force will grow.

  17. 17.

    In this context Thomson asks: “… which work of art does Heidegger think can help us late moderns learn to transcend modern aesthetics from within and thereby discover a path leading beyond modernity?” (Thomson 2011, p. 67).

  18. 18.

    This paradigm was confirmed in the ‘No child left behind’ act of the Bush administration in 2001 cf. Hoppman 2007.

  19. 19.

    The Hobbit – an unexpected journey (2012) directed by Peter Jackson.

  20. 20.

    For the subject music in teaching and education in Denmark, this is documented in Nielsen 2010.

  21. 21.

    On the distinction between the outside and inside of teaching, see Pio 2012, p. 111 (Fig. 3: The didactic circle).

  22. 22.

    This poem is hard to reproduce in English verse. But is says something like ‘the one who thinks that the key to cherish something is to get wise on it, this person has never lived’.

  23. 23.

    See the distinction between ‘social relations’ (ontic) and ‘cultural practices’ (ontological) in Pio 2012, p. 170.

  24. 24.

    English translation: ‘And thus it blossoms/In places of insignificance’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education (IUP), Aarhus University, Tuborgvej 164, DK-2400, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Frederik Pio

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  1. Frederik Pio
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Correspondence to Frederik Pio .

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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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Pio, F. (2015). Musings of Heidegger. Arts Education and the Mall as a ‘Debased’ (Dreyfus) Work of Art. 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_2

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