Publication date:
14 July 2016Length of book:
180 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
233x161mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781498533775
Kierkegaard on Dialogical Education: Vulnerable Freedom examines a unique conception of freedom that underscores the productive role of human vulnerability, as found in the work of Søren Kierkegaard. Anna Strelis Söderquist uncovers Kierkegaard’s method of “indirect communication” as a formative and dialogical approach to education that guides a person in becoming not only free and independent, but also receptive and empathetic. This approach bestows upon a human being the dignity that comes from being both capable and humble. It emphasizes the need for trust and courage alike in our dialogical relations, freeing us to receive and respond to the other both in our need and through our own choosing. Freedom’s secret is that it is at the same time self-empowered and vulnerable, self-giving and receptive, independent and dependent.
Kierkegaard’s method, in both form and content, hinges upon the narrativity of human experience. No human being is immune to the seductive force of stories. Kierkegaard recognizes the power of a story to captivate and to change us, to empower and to humble us, and he makes use of them as formative teachers with whom we enter into dialogue. Through its examination of indirect formation in Kierkegaard through poetry and storytelling, Kierkegaard on Dialogical Education explores the reaches and limits of narrative imagination and inquires into the dialogical and narrative struggle inherent in the formation of identity.
This book will be of interest to philosophers and educators, as well as those who meet at the crossroads of philosophy, education, and art.
Kierkegaard’s method, in both form and content, hinges upon the narrativity of human experience. No human being is immune to the seductive force of stories. Kierkegaard recognizes the power of a story to captivate and to change us, to empower and to humble us, and he makes use of them as formative teachers with whom we enter into dialogue. Through its examination of indirect formation in Kierkegaard through poetry and storytelling, Kierkegaard on Dialogical Education explores the reaches and limits of narrative imagination and inquires into the dialogical and narrative struggle inherent in the formation of identity.
This book will be of interest to philosophers and educators, as well as those who meet at the crossroads of philosophy, education, and art.
In her book Kierkegaard on Dialogical Education, Anna Strelis Söderquist takes a different route. She turns to a philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, and explores the weltanschauung—worldviews, ways, and views of life—that emerge through a close reading of his work. She turns both to his published works, most of which were published pseudonymously, and to his journals and other unpublished texts. This gives a sense of intimacy to the encounter with Kierkegaard’s thought, which is a fertile route into a way of thinking that proceeds from the idea that the individual cannot be understood from the outside, as an object of study, but rather must be studied from the inside. By entering into the thought of Kierkegaard from the inside, by trying to see the world with his eyes or his words, Strelis Söderquist creates a pedagogical world of thought. We encounter Kierkegaard’s texts in close contact with his life, and, in that encounter, a pedagogy emerges. Pedagogy, or a pedagogical reading, creates new conditions for understanding Kierkegaard’s philosophy as much as his philosophy sheds light on pedagogical issues.