[in Japanese]

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This paper clarifies the mechanism of “meeting”, and defines the role of education for preparing human beings for rich possibilities in “meeting”.
O. F. Bollnow regards “meeting” as an accidental gift which defies any methodological treatment in education. At the same time, he attaches educational significance to “self-revelation” as provided by “meeting”. On the basis of contemporary issues of “independence from colonialism”, the author will take up another feature of “meeting”, that is, the educational significance of the “existence of others”. Moreover, the author will examine “meeting” from the point of view of human responsibility, by asking a question : “Why do human beings often fail to meet in day-to-day situations?” The failure to meet derives from the nature of “understanding”. While each language can give expression only to what transcend human sensibilities, human beings would understand “the other's” language within their own limited recognition. As a consequence, the “otherness” of “the other” does not emerge, thus hampering the “meeting”. Therefore, the author would like to suggest, first, that people become conscious of the limitations of languages, and exert their “control of understanding”.
Second, by analyzing the cases of “meeting”, the author will examine the validity of the “control of understanding” as a useful tool for “meeting”. The analysis shows that the “meeting” ensues from “self-revelation” which Bollnow has found educationally significant. In order to highlight this process of “self-transformation”, the author will name it “self-metamorphosis”.
Third, to provoke “self-metamorphosis”, one must understand “the other”. By meeting “the other” in the realm outside of one's understanding, one's understanding will be overthrown and be reversed. “Understanding” is necessary to “meet” the other, and those acts without understanding may turn into “violence”. At this point, the “control of understanding” and the “requirement of understanding” may strike some as inconsistent. In fact, both “understanding” and “less understanding” are violence, and the author will indicate that a life in the midst of such a dilemma will cultivate humanity which will promote rich possibilities in “meeting”.
Finally, the author will criticize Bollnow's idea that the “meeting occurs only among the existences”. “The other” is the existence which goes beyond one's understanding, and which entails one's “self-metamorphosis”. Thus, Bollnow's idea of “the other” cannot be mere existences (without essential attributes). “The other” may either have its attributes or it may be merely existential. The author will insist that the open attitude to any possibility of “the other” holds an important role to play in education.

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The present paper pursues the possibility of contemplating about education or about the human being, even after the death of the human and of the concomitant death of their education. Such an attempt will pose a fundamental challenge to conventional thinking because the former tries to contemplate about those concepts posthumously. A new concept of education replete with novel possibilities is expected to emerge.
For this purpose, the author will present, firstly, as an alternative to the conventional super-historical pedagogy, the design of historical-pedagogic-anthropology. This anthropology regards the object of analysis as an historical construct. Then, from the standpoint of historical-pedagogic-anthropology, he will restore mimesis, which had been banished from the educational domain to the aesthetic one, in an educational, and especially in educators', domain. By analyzing the narration about a wild child from the point of view of mimesis, one can witness humanism, which underpinns the concept of education, disintegrate from within. Nonetheless, the collapse of humanism is not the collapse of education itself. With the affirmation of the difference between those who educate and those who are educated, there will be revived anew the concept of education.

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[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract