Object, subject and recipient of philosophical teaching: a theoretical reflection

Abstract

In this paper, philosophical teaching is subjected to questions regarding the elements that characterize it, namely what is taught, who is taught and who is taught. Thus was born a theoretical reflection on three basic concepts, namely philosophy, the subject and the other. Through the suggestions of great thinkers, primarily the Heidegger of Being and Time, but also Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Deleuze and Levinas, possible definitions of the aforementioned concepts are proposed.

Philosophy is thus considered in a static sense, as a direct path to knowledge, and in a dynamic sense, as an ever-renewing practice. As for the “who”, once it is established that, by nature or ontic necessity, every man tends to know, the subject capable of teaching philosophy to others is defined. This can be either the simple scholar of philosophy or the real philosopher. The difference between the two is configured as follows: the first deals only with the knowledge of already traced paths, the second traces new ones. The recipient of philosophical teaching, on the other hand, is configured as an alterity to which the teaching subjectivity must relate. Here, too, we arrive at a double definition, namely the student as a simple acquaintance, whose active component is limited to the reception of the contents, and the student as a practitioner, who experiments with various methods and gets involved in the theory.

Finally, possible configurations are outlined on the basis of these three pairs of concepts, configurations which, in turn, become multiple in singular realities.