This study examines German educational philosopher Otto Friedrich Bollnow’s (1903–1991) existential-hermeneutic theory of discontinuous forms of education, unstetige formen der Erziehung. At the core of this theory is a view of human being subjected to education that appears disruptive and critical, influencing the development of disclosing the true powers of a person and unfolding of truths about oneself that could not be uncovered otherwise. Typically, this theory has been interpreted on the continuum of hermeneutic philosophy, as hermeneutic pedagogy with an (...) extension of Martin Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, antisubjectivism and especially his theory of truth as unconcealment. According to this line of interpretation, Bollnow’s project brings an existential addition to classical pedagogical theories, as a level of appealing pedagogy. According to this existentialist view, education in a strict sense cannot really take place: it could not affect the true core of a person, nor this person could be subjected under any pedagogical influence in any meaningful way. The only task left for education is to appeal to the conscience of an already autonomous person. However, in this study it is claimed that this line of interpretation falls short to the fact that Bollnow’s philosophy of education builds heavily on his overall philosophical-anthropological project, which springs from Kant’s first critique and especially, as shown in this work, from Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. The study shows, that Bollnow’s discontinuous forms of education are not resulted from hermeneutic educational reality, with an extension of existential potentiality to authenticity of a person. In fact, one could not derive such a view from mere hermeneutics. Instead, what Bollnow’s structural view of educational reality indicates, is that it should be understood as a phenomenological description of a priori categorical structures. It is claimed in the work, that the discontinuous forms are the products of phenomenological reduction. They are derived from the direct experience within consciousness, from the essence of what is experienced, from the very nature of what is it like to be in a process of becoming human. From this perspective, from the subject-point, education cannot be described as a paradox of freedom and restriction between educator and educatee, nor transmission of culture between generations, but instead could be described as the subjective experience of being educated or educating oneself, disclosing oneself to oneself, which is constituted only by the necessary conditions of these subjective experiences of discontinuity. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify the meaning of the pedagogical concept of encounter by providing an overview of its use from the historical foundations of the concept in Otto Friedrich Bollnow’s (1903 to 1991) philosophy to contemporary phenomenological readings by Maxine Greene, Donald Vandenberg and Robyn Harrison. The outcome is a critical analysis and evaluation of the significance of the concept in educational contexts. The aims of the paper are as follows: a) to articulate the educational significance of the concept (...) of encounter, and b) to clarify its relationship to the humanistic concept of formation (or unfolding; Bildung), in order to establish the tension between Bildung-theory and the existential theory of human formation. The paper claims that, for a more elaborated understanding of the human educative process, the tension between the processes of encounter and Bildung should be seen as the core tension behind the holistic view of becoming human. Also, c) for an analysis of the Anglo-American reception of the concept, a phenomenological view of the encounter as a transcendental aspect of a learning process will be made in order to gain a wider view of the concept. (shrink)