Abstract
The aim of this essay is to elaborate on the inner connection between three such diverse entities as lifelong learning, globalization and hermeneutics. After placing lifelong learning in a societal context framed by globalization, my intention is to reflect on the prerequisites for introducing a hermeneutical contribution to the understanding of lifelong learning. First, it is stated that globalization is the most profound horizon today for explaining the current interest we experience in both lifelong learning and hermeneutics. Second, from these links to on globalization, we can also expect to find new links between lifelong learning and hermeneutics. Third, the predominant configuration of lifelong learning according to the logics of globalization and virtues of flexibility is demonstrated, and thereafter criticized mainly from the perspectives of philosophical anthropology. Finally, an alternative configuration of meaning and identity formation in lifelong learning is proposed by utilizing a reformulated theory of interpretation made possible thanks to recent metamorphosis inside the hermeneutical tradition itself.
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Notes
The idea of lifelong education was first fully articulated by Eduard Lindeman and Basil Yeaxlee in the late 1920th, both closely associated with John Dewey (1970) lifelong learning was taken up as a strategic focus for UNESCO and 1972 the epochal book Learning to be was published by Faure et al.
Frank Coffield, among others, has argued that the powerful consensus of lifelong learning is naïve, limited and apparent as well as being deficient, dangerous and diversionary” (Coffield 2002, p. 174). Then, if the thesis is so poor, there are several reasons why it is so popular: it legitimates increased expenditure on education, it provides politicians with the pretext for action, it deflects attention from the need for economic and social reform, and it offers the comforting illusion that for every complex problem there is one simple solution (Coffield 2002).
Kristensson Uggla (2002). My interpretation of the globalization is here heavily influenced by Manuel Castells, Ulrich Beck, David Held, and others.
Although I have been inspired by Edvard De Bono to use the concepts “horizontal thinking” and “vertical thinking”, according to my philosophical grammar they have been given different meaning.
The world “better” has no univocal meaning, but invites to a multitude of interpretations. I include all kinds of interpretations which strives to establish at least a preliminary hierarchy of interpretations by confronting different interpretations.
The experience and exploration of globalization is full of ambivalence and paradoxical phenomenon. The globalization process means both globalization and localization, both connectedness and fragmentation, both centralization and decentralization, and so on. In the framework of hermeneutics these paradoxes are transformed into a dialectical approach. Consequently, the counterpart of the paradoxes of globalization is the internal dialectical structure in hermeneutics articulated as a heterogeneous synthesis, the dialectic between productivity and receptivity, sameness and difference, explanation and understanding, and so on.
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Kristensson Uggla, B. Who is the Lifelong Learner? Globalization, Lifelong Learning and Hermeneutics. Stud Philos Educ 27, 211–226 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-007-9074-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-007-9074-y