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An Interpretive Study of the Work of Martin Heidegger and an Exploration of the Implications of His Thought for Processes of Learning

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An Interpretive Study of the Work of Martin Heidegger and an Exploration of the Implications of His Thought for Processes of Learning University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1980 Language and learning : an interpretive study of the work of Martin Heidegger and an exploration of the implications of his thought for processes of learning. Patricia Ann McNally University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation McNally, Patricia Ann, "Language and learning : an interpretive study of the work of Martin Heidegger and an exploration of the implications of his thought for processes of learning." (1980). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 3596. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/3596 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LANGUAGE AND LEARNING: AN INTERPRETIVE STUDY OF THE WORK OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND AN EXPLORATION OF THE IMPLICATIONS OF HIS THOUGHT FOR PROCESSES OF LEARNING A Dissertation Presented By Patricia Ann McNally Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF EDUCATION May 1980 Education Patricia Ann McNally 1979 (c) All Rights Reserved < LANGUAGE AND LEARNING: AN INTERPRETIVE STUDY OF THE WORK OF MARTIN HEIDEIIGER AND AN EXPLORATION OF THE IMPLICATIONS OF HIS THOUGHT FOR PROCESSES OF LEARNING A Dissertation Presented By Patricia Ann McNally Approved as to style and content by: r' tr* lA/ K ^ I H ^ i K* r\o Peter H . Wagschal , Chairperson Donald L. Banks, Member Samuel F. Will, Jr., Member Mario Farytini, Dean School of Education iii DEDICATION Daniel J. Hoy IV TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION TABLE OF CONTENTS ^ ABSTRACT ^jj Chapter I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1 Purpose 1 Statement of the Problem 2 Significance -14 Guide to the Reader 15 Note on Translations 20 PART ONE PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONCERNS II. INTRODUCTION TO MARTIN HEIDEGGER 24 III. EXPLANATION OF TERMS 36 Nihilism 36 The Hermeneutical Process 40 Man as Relation 44 Questioning 52 The Fundamental Question & Its Historical Relevance 56 Heidegger's Understanding of History 65 IV. EARLY GREEK THOUGHT 76 Being 77 Truth 82 Mystery 101 Logos 119 V. DEVOLUTION 147 Being and Appearance 151 Being and Thinking 1^0 VI. LANGUAGE 188 V PART TWO EPISTEMOLOGICAL CONCERNS VII. INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS 214 Context 217 Primary and Secondary Context 217 Partial and Impartial Expressions of Being 218 VIII. ADVANCING AN ALTERNATE EPISTEMOLOGY 226 IX. SECONDARY CONTEXTS OF LEARNING 236 The Contradicting Process 239 The Idealizing Process 254 Subjectivism 265 X. IMPLICATIONS AND SUMMARY 284 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 308 VI ABSTRACT LANGUAGE AND LEARNING: AN INTERPRETIVE STUDY OF THE WORK OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND AN EXPLORATION OF THE IMPLICATIONS OF HIS THOUGHT FOR PROCESSES OF LEARNING (May 1980) Patricia Ann McNally, B.S., Clark University M.Ed., University of Massachusetts Ed.D., University of Massachusetts Directed by: Professor Peter Wagschal This dissertation focuses on language and how its use and structure in Western society affect the way man learns. The paper is set forth in two parts. Part One is an interpretation of Martin Heidegger's phenomenological exegesis of early Greek words. Using this phenomenological exegesis of early Greek language as a philosophical foundation, Part Two proposes a theory of learning and looks at the linguistic structures through which Western man has characteristically learned. Chapter I, GENERAL INTRODUCTION, offers the reader a statement of the problem and advances the hypothesis that continuance of the disassociative Zeitgeist which plagues Western society may be related to man's failure to question those linguistic contexts and frameworks through which learning is attempted and general content is transmitted and conveyed. Part One begins with a VII introduction to Martin Heidegger and an overview of his work. This is followed by an exploration of terms pivotal to an understanding of Heidegger's work, along with a fairly detailed interpretation of the structural changes Heidegger chronicles in the historical development of language. An epistemology, or theory of learning, is advanced in Part Two. This proposed theory states essentially that learning requires motion; more specifically, that learning requires a recognition of relational motion. Furthermore, it is advanced that where there is a lack of motion, which is to say where relational motion is not perceived by the learner, the learning that occurs is partial. The paper then proceeds to a discussion of those processes of learning which the author sees as representative of Western man's structuring of language. These include the contradicting process, the idealizing process, the valuing process, the explanatory process, the commotioning process, and the either-or process. Finally, the implications of this theoretical discussion for future studies in learning and education are raised. viii CHAPTER GENERAL INTRODUCTION Purpose The overall purpose of this paper can be summarized as an attempt to explore the linguistic contexts through which Western man r learns to learn in an effort to discern whether these contexts impede ^ or contribute to man's knowledge of himself and the world, and to explore to what extent man's present contexts underlie the profound disassociation afflicting modern man. This overall purpose involves several relational concerns. These concerns are set forth in two parts. The first part of the paper is an interpretive study of Martin Heidegger's extensive work in exploring the nature of the relationship between man and language. For Heidegger, disclosure of the nature of this relationship involves "re-thinking" the language of early Greek philosophy, for it is out of the early Greek philosophical language that Western metaphysics and epistemology have evolved their linguistic structures and premises. The purpose of the first part of the dissertation, then, is twofold: 1) to build a philosophical foundation for the theory of learning proposed in Part Two, and 2) to ressurect Martin Heidegger's extensive work in the area of language. 1 2 The purpose of Part Two is multiple; 1) to set forth an epis- temology, or theory of learning, that proceeds upon the phenomenological groundwork of Part One; 2) to look at some of Western man's present contextual frameworks and processes of learning in light of this proposed theory of learning; and 3) to outline the possible directions and implications of this theory of learning for future studies in education. Statement of the Problem Western man has spent the last century, and more noticeably and emphatically, the last forty years, wrestling with alienation, fragmentation, and meaninglessness. In an effort to undercut this gnawing experience of the world and in an attempt to create meaning where meaning no longer seems to exist, man increasingly turns to language--to the creation of new metaphors, to the espousal of new ideas, to the publication of countless books. The new metaphors that arise, however, very quickly and quietly go the way of the old metaphors, becoming swallowed up in the fragmentation of the age. This year's facts become next year's factions, only serving to reveal more vividly the pervasiveness and depth of the fragmentation that man's new metaphors had set out to overcome. Ironically, man's search for meaning often only unearths a deeper meaninglessness. 3 In some way, man seems undermined and defeated on "another level," on a level that is so encompassing that it cannot be pierced, on a level that somehow holds man in its hands. In his recent biography on Carl Jung, Laurens van der Post speaks of the profound disassociation that typifies our culture and its people and how difficult it is to heal. In speaking of this profound disassociation, van der Post addresses this "other level." It was so difficult to heal, I believe, because it was supported by a similar tendency to dichotomy in the spirit of an entire civilisation backed up, as it were, by all that was negative in the twentieth-century Zeitgeist , and so was in a sense incapable of cure without healing at the same time the mass of huyianity and cultural pressures rallied unconsciously behind it. Van der Post says here that the fragmentation Western man experiences is difficult to heal because it is supported by a fundamental dichotomy in the thought and spirit of the times. That is to say, the fragmentation man experiences is supported by the structured ways and contexts through which man reflects upon himself and the world. These structures, forms, contexts constitute man's "use" of language. If Western man's thought patterns and linguistic structures are themselves dichotomized, or more broadly phrased, disassociative, then modern man's attempts to heal frag- another mentation and disassociation are indeed being subverted at level--at the level of man's contextual frameworks. 4 Man has long since recognized that neurosis, and very often psychosis, are, for the most part, the result of mental attitudes rather than organic disorders. Man's way of conceptualizing who he is informs his behavior; man's way of conceiving the world and the self determines his actions. Subsequently, if man conceives himself and the world through fragmented and disassociative contextual
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