<Articles>Education, Freedom and Temporality (The 7th International Symposium between the Institute of Education, University of London (UK), and the Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University (Japan))

Abstract

Since it was first published in 2011, 'A Manifesto for Education' by Gert Biesta and Karl Anders Säfitröm has received numerous enthusiastic reviews and been hailed as providing 'an alternative vision for education'. This paper attempts to explore what the authors refer to as the ironic usage of this genre of writing in relation to its message. The authors diagnose a problem in education related to the modern understanding of time, and they suggest an alternative 'non-temporality' in which we 'stay in the tension between "what is" and "what is not"'. While I appreciate the Manifesto's attempt to offer criticism based on the link between freedom and temporality in education, I take issue with aspects of their analysis. In reading of Martin Heidegger, I discuss temporality and freedom in which the concept of time in education is understood in terms of human freedom as possibility. Further discussion on freedom is made in terms of nothingness in Heidegger and the Kyoto School. With reference to a brief analysis of the Chinese character, mu, I attempt to offer an account of freedom in relation with nothingness.