In this paper, I want to investigate the implications that the thoughts of the philosophers Hegel, Buber, Heidegger, and Gadamer can have on teaching and studying English . I am especially interested in the interpersonal relationships between the self and the other and between human beings and otherness as it is experienced in words and texts. We encounter otherness at first as something that is not-us, since otherness appears to imply something being other-than-us. Generally, the category of the other implies something being different from something else. Almost automatically in writing about otherness, one seems to enter into a language of things and of difference, of the self and the other as separate and independent entities. I want to argue for an overcoming of these categories of separation between human beings, by which I mean the recognition of the other as a necessary part of our world, and I want to recognize literature as deserving of similar attention. Beginning with Hegel's master-slave dialectic, I will establish certain dynamics which are at work between human beings. In Buber's book, Ich und Du, we find a description of what I would consider ideal human relationships. Heidegger's thought poses a model of subject-object relationships that I try to relate to the study of literature, and I end this paper with a discussion of Gadamer's view of a good scholar.

In Hegel's chapter on autonomy and dependence in his Phaenomenologie des Geistes, he describes self-other relationships as being characterized by fear, desire, violence, domination and subjection. In this chapter, the encounter of two human beings is exposed as being essentially a battle to the death between opposing self-consciousnesses. In the Phaenomenologie des Geistes, Hegel describes the development of self-consciousness as starting out from defining itself as not-otherness, i. e., by its being different from other things and beings. He goes on to write that self-consciousness

has to negate its own otherness; this is the negation of the first ambiguity and thus itself another ambiguity; first, it has to attempt to negate the other independent being in order to become certain of itself as being, secondly it attempts therewith to negate itself because this other is itself (Hegel 140).

I believe that this short quotation out of a monumental text bears within it many of the significant aspects of Hegel's thoughts about the dynamics of the self-other relationship. Here, Hegel describes the encounter of two human beings and their struggle to remain themselves when confronted with the other. Both approach this confrontation with a certain conception of who they are and feel this self-portrait to be threatened by the other, since this other self-consciousness, of course, has its own conception of his or her counterpart. Thus, this encounter turns into a battle about whose self- and other-definition will prevail. Interestingly, this description of the self does not necessarily presuppose a stable self, but rather a desire for it a violent desire, willing to step over corpses in order to achieve stability. Self-consciousness, according to Hegel, is always changing and developing, and especially in the encounter with other human beings, it is forced to change.

The brilliant young teacher, for example, might not be seen as such by his or her students and will have to struggle to convert them to his view of him- or herself or surrender and give in to the students' perception of himself as a confused and muddle-headed individual. In the encounter of the teacher and English 150 students, different views of what it means to be a good writer clash: the teacher tries to assert his or her view of clarity in writing over a wide range of opinions that differ from this view. A battle to the death breaks out fortunately only about conceptions of writing and not about the entire being of student or teacher. Nevertheless, a student might find his or her understanding of the self be threatened by unexpected difficulties or bad grades. It is in some sense an unequal battle field on which the teacher is employed with the bigger battalions: hopefully more thought about the teaching of writing, an entire undergraduate-and-more education to back him or her up, and, of course, the authority invested by the grade-book..

Hegel's description extends to the entire development of self-consciousness, and I think his master-slave dialectic can be readily transposed on many destructive personal or group relationships. From the question of whose definition of a peace agreement will prevail, or whose understanding of racial superiority will be accepted, to questions of personal identity in love relationships, individual freedom and peer pressure, and debates about the role of God in human affairs Hegel appears to claim that all human encounter brings with it a continual battle of thesis and antithesis which compete for dominion over each other. I believe that it is the responsibility of the teacher to explicitly limit the confrontation between her- or himself and the 150 student to the arena of writing which might be easier said than done.

Hegel further writes that self-consciousness has to "negate its own otherness," and this seems to imply that in this encounter with the other, self-consciousness has lost some of its ownness, or better, something has been added to its own self-image, namely, the other's definition of who one is. This added otherness which has come into being in the encounter with the other is therefore a disturbing and even threatening aspect that has to be negated, which means that the own conception of the self must be recovered. The certainty of who one is needs to be re-established; for example, the graduate student who thought his or her career would lie in the field of literature and who, in the confrontation with academia has lost some of the certainty about her- or himself, needs to recover this self-image of being a capable literature student or create a new self-image. The other, in this case other students, professors, a university, or academia as a whole have threatened the student's conception of the self and raised doubts, questioned ability, or simply annihilated the student's idea of him- or herself: this idea no longer makes sense to the student, because it had to incorporate aspects of otherness. Only if the student can either negate these outside perceptions or incorporate them in a new self-image, will he or she be able to carry on studying literature.

I believe that "its own otherness" is the self-consciousness' realization of being drawn outside of itself; into the other, so to speak. The recovery of the self from the influence of the other requires more than the negation of one's own otherness, though: Hegel writes that self-consciousness has to negate the other in its entirety as well. Only by the negation of the other does it become "certain of itself as being" which suggests that the self needs the confrontation with and negation of otherness in order to become aware of itself. On a very basic level this means that consciousness is made aware of its existence by primary needs such as hunger, desire, or other physical sensations. These force consciousness, which was occupied in the contemplation of otherness, i. e., being hungry, desiring something or someone, feeling cold or hot, to return to its self and become aware of the I. It seems as if Hegel describes the self as being momentarily lost in the other in the contemplated object of desire, for example when it realizes that it is the I which is desiring and that it is the I which wants to satisfy this desire. For the contemplated apple this means literal death by consumption, but in the confrontation with another self-consciousness this battle suggests that one of the two self-consciousnesses will win, the other will loose. Only if the defeated other can no longer impose its will anymore is self-consciousness free to define itself again and the other as well.
The winner, or master, of this battle does not only gain the recovery of its self-image but is also put in a position to define the other. The master is for-itself, Hegel writes, and the slave is for-the-other which suggests that the winner exists according to his or her subjective reality, whereas the loser of this battle receives its meaning from someone else: the master's subjective reality has been verified by someone or something outside of him- or herself. The slave, on the other hand, is no longer free to define itself or to assert its subjective reality. The slave's being is defined now by the master: the slave's self-consciousness is dead. The master is the self and the slave is the other. In the limited writing-battle of teachers and students in, the teacher's view of writing has mastered the student's view thereof, and the latter's 'writing-being' has been enslaved. Recognition is received and granted now in a one-way direction; the slave recognizes the master as master, the master, though, does not recognize the slave; the master merely defines the slave as slave: recognition implies the acceptance of the other according to the other's humanity, or at least according to the other's perception of itself, and imposing one's will is not what Hegel would call recognition. With the recognition of the master by the submissive slave the battle has ended temporarily: a new thesis and an antithesis have been established.

I believe that this description of the strive for recognition and the desire to have one's subjective reality universally accepted is a convincing account for a lot of violent and disrespectful behavior that we encounter. From wars to marital abuse, from less violent, though dynamically similar I would suggest publishing scholarly treatises on Victorian novels to preaching sermons, and teaching in the English 150 classroom, the battle for recognition by the other seems omnipresent. Just like the abusive husband tries to force his reality on an objectified world, the scholar reduces academic discourse to short quotations in his or her work in order to define the other scholars' positions against which the scholar will argue. In all these instances, the other is that which needs to be reified and negated: the synthesis which is the overcoming of this self-other or subject-object dichotomy is yet missing.

I quoted Hegel as saying that the ambiguity (the "Doppelsinn") of self-consciousness "negates itself because the other is itself," and it seems to me as if the synthesis of the master-slave relationship is already implied in this quotation: the other, by potentially recognizing the self is the conditio sine qua non of the self; it makes human reality possible. Man is essentially social and only through the recognition by other human beings capable of ascending from a state of animal consciousness to a mutually recognized human self-consciousness. The master receives no satisfaction from the slave's recognition, because it is not another human being which freely recognizes him or her. Only the other human being as the potential source of recognition makes the human self possible and I think it is in that sense that it "is" the self. The teacher and the 150 students, engaging in their writing battle, are also in need of recognition on a more general level: I think that the acceptance of the students as human beings, not as "kids" or even "munchkins," is central to the success of a class. More than writing is at stake.

A relationship of mutual recognition can be found in Martin Buber's Ich und Du where he describes the relationships of the self with the world as being twofold: the I either encounters otherness in an I-It or an I-You relationship. Buber writes that

The basic word I-You can be spoken only with one's whole being. The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, can never be accomplished without me. I require a You to become, becoming I, I say You. All actual life is encounter (Buber 18).

Martin Buber draws a distinction between the I of the I-It relationship and the I of the I-You relationship: both are possibilities and realities of our human existence, but they are based on a fundamentally different stance towards the world. If I speak the You with my entire being speaking seems to be ontologically charged in Ich und Du Buber asks me to open myself up for the influence of the other (the You does not have to be a human being). The other actually becomes my sun, i. e., the You is what allows me to see and it is that around which I gravitate. Under the influence of the You, I do not only not impose myself on the other, it seems as if I can not even be said to exist as an independent being.

Nevertheless, Buber writes that the I can only speak the You with its entire being and he seems to create a hierarchy of degrees of wholeness of being in relationships: relating to the other as It does not even require the involvement of the entire I B as little as the other is recognized in its entirety, the I recognizes with its entire being. The 150 students as a 'kids' are not a You, and neither is he or she a You, if the teacher looks at them as stepping stones on which to approach the Ph.D.. Furthermore, the teacher is not even a complete I when relating to others as means to his or her own advancement, or as inferior students of English.

Trying to relate to another thing or person in its entirety requires me to give myself over, to forget myself quite literally; if I relate to the other as You, I create the space in which the unfolding of the You takes place. Buber appears to envision a relationship in which the You almost seems to expand into the I and uses the room that is thus offered by the I to unfold its being into it. The student in English 150 needs this room to grow into, in her or his efforts to become a more competent writer, and the teacher has to be able to provide this room while engaging with the student in his or her entirety only then does the teacher receive his or her own full identity in turn. Both are then recognized by the other as more then compartmentalized human beings, and I believe that this is not merely a high and lofty ideal an utopian vision of teaching heaven but I think that both parties gain a great deal when their relationship is not simply the one between teacher and student.

I believe that this is what Buber might have had in mind when he wrote that I speak the basic word I-You with my whole being. This opening up of myself, this losing of myself in the other is not a loss, though. On the contrary, it appears to be the enabling condition of "actual life:" in this relationship in which I open myself to the other, the other opens up its being to me as well. I believe that this is a relevant issue in talking about teaching, because it happens very often that students and teacher compartmentalize their subjects take out the chemistry being for an hour, switch into English behavior, and then put on the Friday night personality. Similarly, the teacher might not bring his or her entire being into the 150 classroom, but merely the teacher's version of him- or herself. A relationship between human beings is obviously impossible when neither teacher nor student even bring their entire being into the classroom.

The gathering and fusion that Buber envisions to take place in human relationships between myself and the other is a mutual activity in which both are essential for the encounter but neither sufficient to be whole and independent beings. "Concentration and fusion" are descriptive of the human endeavor to overcome clear and distinct borders between the self and the world. In a mutual attempt to bring together ourselves, we actually become unified with the other the subject-object dichotomy has been resolved through a "fusion" of the two. All of this can only occur in relationships in which I unfold and actualize myself by letting the other unfold and actualize itself, and vice versa: "all actual life is encounter." For Buber, there is no self-sufficient or solipsistic I there is no I without You, no self without other.

And still there are many times when I relate to the world as It. Either because I am unwilling to reveal myself to the other, or simply because I can not relate to everything and everyone simultaneously as You in the classroom with over twenty human beings it is necessary to fade ninety percent of the class into the background while focusing on one student. The relationship between myself and another You is exclusive, Buber writes, and while this expresses the totality with which I give myself over to the other, it also excludes the possibility of relating to more than one other being at a time in this way. This exclusivity of the You is at the same time our potential for greatness as human beings and our tragedy, Buber asserts: we know that no I-You relationship lasts forever and that in choosing one particular You, we always also refuse many possible I-You encounters. The moment we turn from the most needed, most reciprocally fulfilling relationship with another human being or thing in the world and open ourselves up for the next encounter, the You fades in the background, into the itworld.

There is a continual shifting which takes place, back and forth, from me relating to otherness as You, to me as relating to otherness as It. Buber uses the metaphor of the chrysalis and the butterfly to illustrate this dynamic:

The It is the eternal chrysalis, the You the eternal butterfly. But those are not always states which are cleanly separated; often it is a profound multiplicity of wildly intertwined activity. (Buber 25)

In this image, we can see that the itworld is presented as merely not-actualized potential and I suggest that Buber describes our human reality as partly created, partly given to us: we are responsible to encounter the world in such a way as to reveal the butterflies and open ourselves up for the reception of a butterfly wherever we see and encounter one. In that sense we create the world, we prepare ourselves actively for the recognition of a butterfly, but at the same time, we can't force a chrysalis to hatch prematurely. I suggest that this is the aspect of givenness which is part of human reality: we simply find ourselves in the world and I-You relationships sometimes simply happen; they are part of the world which is given to us. It is interesting though, that Buber uses this image, because it implies a co-existence of it- and youworld: as long as there are chrysalises, they will turn into butterflies no matter what we do.

Buber qualifies this metaphor by pointing out the lack of clear and definable borders between the chrysalis and the butterfly, i. e., we don't know when a chrysalis ceases to be a chrysalis and a butterfly begins to be a butterfly. In their co-existence, the itworld and the youworld are a "profound multiplicity of wildly intertwined activity," Buber states. In our relationships with the world we continually switch back and forth between the two states, we find ourselves relating to otherness in manifold ways and also related to in more than two distinct ways. The teacher simply can not treat all students as Yous at all times, probable more often than not she or he has to relate to students as It. I believe that this makes it even more imperative to use every chance ones gets to cultivate I-Thou relationships.

The chrysalis-butterfly metaphor breaks down altogether when Buber stresses the continual return of the You into the It: butterflies can always become chrysalises again. In human relationships, laws of biology do not apply, and Buber describes our reality as a life surrounded by an itworld that we constantly try to inspire with life into a world of I-You relationships.

Both worlds, the itworld of the chrysalis and the youworld of the butterfly, are realities of our human existence and it seems to me that Buber uses this metaphor in order to stress the aspect of choice in our human existence: only in a relationship in which we choose to relate to otherness as You, as a being which we recognize in its entirety, lies true human reality. Anything less is subhuman existence because it rejects the other's potential to hatch, so to speak. According to Buber, our responsibility as human beings is to be constantly aware of the inherent potential of the itworld and to actualize it wherever we can.

In our encounter with otherness we therefore have to make the choice between giving ourselves over to another You or to remain detached and relate to a single aspect of it. The other will remain an It if we view otherness through our objectifying magnifying glass or through our objectifying binoculars, as Buber writes. In both instances of seeing otherness we fail to respect and recognize it as a whole and focus in on mere details. In our relationship with the whole we can allow for no reduction to simplistic interpretations of the other.

Martin Heidegger meditates about the relationship of the work of art to the world in his essay "The Origin of the Work of Art." How can we connect meaningfully to a work of art, so that we can reveal it in its essential character? How does this relate to literary texts and the teaching thereof, and how can I apply Heidegger's thoughts to my own scholarship, are questions that I want to discuss while reading Heidegger's text. He begins by asking what it is that makes art art, and Heidegger distinguishes between the thingly and the artistic aspect of a work of art. The thingly aspect of art is for example the paper upon which something is written, the color and canvas of a painting, or the bronze of a sculpture. How can we understand this aspect of art, he asks, and writes: "[e]verything that might interpose itself between the thing and us in apprehending and talking about it must first be set aside" (Heidegger 151). I suggest that this assertion is central to Heidegger's view of our relationships with the world and of art as well the direct and unmediated connection between myself and the world is the only meaningful and truth-revealing approach to otherness.

Things, if they are only perceived as the bearers of characteristics, i. e., trees, if they are only apprehended as wood and leaves of certain kind, color, and shape, remain mere objects, and we can not be said to have related to them in a meaningful way or to have understood anything about their Being. This thing-concept of looking at the ocean and only seeing the price of fish is a way of "apprehending and talking" about things that comes between us and the Being of a thing. The ocean is here merely a profit-producing object, but the ocean as ocean, i. e., the ocean in its Being is far removed from view. Heidegger presents a similar example in his essay "The Question Concerning Technology," when he opposes the Rhine, as seen by the poet Hoelderlin, and the Rhine as a generator of hydroelectricity (Heidegger 321). The latter view interjects an economic and technological perspective between us and the Rhine which keeps us from experiencing the river as a river. Similarly, I would suggest that we lose sight of the literary text in its being when we interpose secondary views between ourselves and the text. True seeing, the apprehension of Being in things, is for Heidegger always a liberation from those interposing perspectives, a revealing or bringing-forth of the essential.

This revealing of truth requires space -- space which we have to grant to the thing in order to let it unfold in its Being. The Greek word for truth, alethia, which means to bring into the open or to reveal, seems to be programmatic for Heidegger's thinking. The truth of a work of art is that which it reveals to us as we let it Be and let it unfold into an open space which it can inhabit. This open space is that within which the work of art dwells but only if we allow it to. It is a curious interplay of active enabling and passive letting-be which we have to enter into in our encounter with otherness. I suggest that we can see similarities to Martin Buber's description of the I-You relationship in Heidegger's ontological concerns: the other and its Being is an It, if we encounter otherness in a mediated way, if we let something "interpose itself between the thing and us," and only if we open ourselves up to the presence of another human being or another thing, can we perceive it in its Being as You.

I want to try to relate Heidegger's thinking to literary texts and language in general, and I suggest that he states something relevant about it when he discusses what he calls the unfolding of the earth. Heidegger sees a destruction of the earth taking place in the technological-scientific analysis of it, e. g., he describes the loss of understanding of color when it is reduced to its wavelength. The earth, he implies, has to be granted its mystical aspect if we want to let it unfold there is something undisclosable about it which we have to honor in order to come to a true understanding of it. Color is more than wavelength, just like the Rhine is more than a tourist attraction or an engine for hydroelectric turbines.

Heidegger writes about different ways of this "setting forth of earth," as he calls it, and in relation to language he states that:

[t]o be sure, the poet also uses the word not, however, like ordinary speakers and writers who have to use them up, but rather in such a way that the word only now becomes and remains truly a word (173).

Words can obviously be used and abused in many ways, and Heidegger seems to claim that it is the poet who uses words truthfully B not the philosopher or the scientist. The poetic language does not use up words which suggests that a word can have a life span beyond the time it takes to utter it. A word which speaks truth remains alive long after it has been pronounced, it has not been used up like the words spoken in some English classes while rushing from topic to topic, argument to narration, narration to description, always trying to get through a certain agenda which can limit the amount of space that the teacher can provide (space for students and words). I believe that a poetic word (which anyone can utter), a word which "remains truly a word," is one that takes time and deliberate care in its placement and which remains alive as a reward for this care with which it was used.

The Heideggerian poet, I suggest, does not have to be Hoelderlin or Milton the poet is the one who uses her or his words to reveal truth in the original sense of alethia, i. e., to speak or write in order to bring the Being of the subject matter of discourse into the open. Heidegger himself is engaging in a sort of poetic philosophy, an investigative meditation about our relationships with the world relationships that need an infusion of poetic mystery rather than scientific analysis. It seems to me as if his treatment of language as a part of his larger discussion of art discloses a path for teachers and students which leads to an unmediated nearness to texts and a rich experience of language.

The teacher who wants to exercise a similar care in his English 150 classroom has to value nothing higher than the words of the texts he or she uses, the questions posed and answers given, and mainly the words of the students that are being spoken in class. I believe that Heidegger calls the teacher to present thought and material without using it up, without viewing writing as a finite puzzle whose pieces the teacher possesses and which he or she spoon-feeds and professes to the class. In a Heideggerian fashion, the teacher has to try to find a path into the material which opens it up to the class and helps to apprehend and talk about it in an unmediated way. Teaching to think, read, and write as interpreters of whatever one is confronted with, can not be achieved by asking students to fulfill assignments which are finite, i. e., by making them write about something to which one knows the answer already. The professing professor who does so, creates the illusion of a closed off subject matter, e. g., by assigning a description paper whose limits are mostly limits of style and grammar, but once those have been corrected, the paper must receive an A.

I believe that a text needs to be in the classroom whose words can be honored, brought to life, and interpreted by the students and the teacher. The words about a description paper are soon used up, whereas discussing, thinking, and writing about a sophisticated text should prove an endless source of material to work with. The text in its unmediated presence in the classroom, treated as a You, forces anyone who engages with it in written form to engage with it in an original and thoughtful way a way that requires very deliberate and clear prose in order to make sense out of an unclear text. Teaching writing through this attempt of using the classroom discussions and writing assignments as ways to not merely say something correct about a text, but to touch upon something essential in the materials that are covered to paraphrase Heidegger in "The Question Concerning Technology" is in my opinion infinitely more important in the education of a student than the ability to distinguish between deduction, induction, connotation, denotation, etc.1. I think that it is a misconception to assume that this interpretative task of students and teachers is a highly specialized effort of literature lovers who can not relate to the 'real world.' What could be more helpful than to understand the meaning of family in Richard III in order to relate this to one's own experience? What is more real than trying to engage in an exchange of opinions with other human beings in order to gain insight into human dilemmas?

A model for scholarship that I would like to follow as well as teach, is presented by Hans-Georg Gadamer in his essay 'The Hermeneutical Problem.' He questions what he calls a 'methodological sterility' which is the robotic application of skills and tools to a problem, in order to ask,

what it is that really makes the productive scholar. That he has learned the methods? The person who never produces anything new has also done that. It is imagination [Phantasie] that is the decisive function of the scholar. Imagination has a hermeneutical function and serves the sense for what is questionable. It serves the ability to expose real, productive questions, something in which, generally speaking, only he who masters all the methods of his science succeeds (Gadamer 117-118).

I chose to end with Gadamer's essay, because it points out the dilemma of having to know methods without being a slave to those I do not understand this in the way of the apprentice model of academia, i. e., the student has to be broken, methods have to be taught, and then he or she can find an idiosyncratic style. I am afraid that the instilling of methodology might be more permanent than this suggests. Gadamer writes about 1000 historians conducting research, 'so that the 1001st historian can find something interesting' (118). This model of research shows the inability of the scientist to transcend his or her realm in order to ask a question which might lift him or her above the crowd, and although this is a caricature, as Gadamer states, it points to the problem of never being able to leave those methods which have been instilled in the student. It is a reassuring belief for those who teach methods (and think they break 'bad habits') that their students will retain their idiosyncratic view of the world, but I believe that more often than not the methods remain, and the student's personality recedes into the background.

It is certainly neither Gadamer's nor my idea to advocate random and unthoughtful research, but I suggest that a students 'who never produces anything new' are B though abhorred by everyone more common than students (or teachers) with imagination. I suggest that Gadamer's example of the 1000 historians also describes the different views of originality within academia: the scholar who tries to write about something that nobody has ever thought of, lets these other thoughts determine his or her research, whereas the imaginative scholar attempts to look at something from his or her unique perspective. I think that the latter scholar can not but be original, since nobody else could have seen a certain text in exactly the same way. As a teacher, it seems then to be imperative to encourage this trust in the students' idiosyncratic perspectives and to foster their imagination.

The emphasis on having to teach how to cite correctly, how to construct an argument, etc. should not get in the way of sharpening the sense 'for what is questionable' or even worse, in the way of the imagination. The ability to detect what is questionable and to be able to face a complex situation and interpret it successfully are at least as important as the mastering of a certain method of citation. Those are not exclusive issues, and as Gadamer points out, the productive scholar needs to be able to control his or her methodology, but it seems to be important to understand the teaching of English 150 not as a course in writing methodology only. The compartmentalization of methodology and imagination into different levels of English instruction appears to be counterproductive to the development of students who are imaginative and skilled in writing. I like to think that the production of original and new thoughts can be encouraged in the setting of the English 150 class by mastering the methods of writing as a byproduct of learning how to ask real and productive questions.

 

Works Cited

Buber, Martin. Ich und Du. Leipzig: Inselverlag, 1923.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 'The Hermeneutical Problem.' The Continental Philosophy Reader. Ed. Richard Kearney and Mara Rainwater. London: Routledge, 1996.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phaenomenologie des Geistes. 1807. Reclam: Stuttgart, 1987.

Heidegger, Martin. 'The Origin of the Work of Art.' 1936. 'The Question Concerning Technology.' 1953. Basic Writings. Ed. David Krell. San Francisco: Harper, 1992.

 

Notes

1 Heidegger writes that A[t]he correct always fixes upon something pertinent in whatever is under consideration. However, in order to be correct, this fixing by no means needs to uncover the thing in question in its essence. (Basic Writings 313)