This problematization is carried out with the goal of rehabilitating life-world habitual and doxic experiences in their signifcance to the theory of Bildung. This is accomplished in two steps. First, with Egon Schütz, Edmund Husserl, and Eugen Fink, we provide a phenomenological perspective on the foundations and the modes of operation of the judgment. With Schütz, it is possible to detach judgment and thus Bildung and self-activity (Selbsttätigkeit) from the logocentric fxation on knowledge, truth, and generality. By including the pre-predicative and doxic dimensions of judgment, habits and opinions can be pointed out as the foundation and as the functional mode of judgment. Bildung thus becomes describable as a formation of opinions (Meinungsbildung) (cf. Schütz, 1975). The sociality of opinion as

1All direct quotes in this article that do not specifcally refer to English-language publications were translated by the authors themselves.

judgment is then extended in the second step with Pierre Bourdieu from a socialtheoretical perspective. For this, we work out the habitualized doxa as the primary, judging approach to the world. We thus determine the pre-predicative judgment as a mode of the habitus and show that habitual dispositions transmitted through social practices are the basis of the experience of the world. In this way, habit, routine, and habitus can be taken out of the dual of mere affrmation and transformation that underlies Benner's theory. The phenomenological and practice-theoretical considerations make it possible to bring into view both the life-world and bodily dimensions of pedagogical practice, as well as the dimensions of power, social inequality, distinction, and privilege, and capture them in their signifcance for the processes of Bildung.

#### **Non-affrmative Education and Bildung in Dietrich Benner's Work**

We would frst like to outline the basic ideas of Dietrich Benner's non-affrmative theory of education (Erziehung)2 and Bildung. In Benner's understanding, these two theoretical approaches are closely related, insofar as non-affrmative education always implies a 'way of acting pedagogically' (Benner, 2015, p. 155) that is openly directed at a summoning to self-activity (Aufforderung zur Selbsttätigkeit) on the part of the educand. This summoning to self-activity is rooted in the idea of the fundamental Bildsamkeit or perfectibility (Rousseau) of the human being. In this sense, non-affrmative education intentionally aims at non-affrmative Bildung, understood as the 'transformational work of the human being on his or her determination3 '(Benner, 2015, p. 167). It becomes clear that Benner is interested in grasping the basic structures of pedagogical thinking and acting in their systematic and problem-historical relation to one another, as is also stated in the subtitle of his General Pedagogy (Allgemeine Pädagogik).4 Benner's non-affrmative theory of education is complemented by a non-affrmative theory of educational institutions, which we will only mention here briefy.

The pair of concepts of affrmative and non-affrmative opens up a feld of tension in Benner's theory of pedagogical thinking and acting. Affrmative, understood as positive approval, can refer to different aspects in the context of theories and practices of education. Benner's primary interest in this regard is the 'basic questions underlying an idea of education that does not seek to educate future

2 In the following, we use the term 'education' in the same way Benner uses 'Erziehung'. We maintain the German term Bildung untranslated.

3With 'determination' we refer to the German term 'Bestimmung'.  It translates to: 'A systematic-problem-historical introduction to the fundamental structure of pedagogical thinking and acting'.

generations either to affrm an existing order or to recognize an order conceived of by educators' (Benner, Chap. 2, this volume, p. 5). The goal of education, as Benner puts it is that the educand, i.e., the young people who are to be educated, 'enter educational processes (Bildungsprozesse) that have not been directed by education (Erziehung)' (ibid., p. 4). In other words, 'young people were not to be educated to affrm existing conditions or to affrm pedagogical actors as representatives of anticipated conditions but must be enabled to participate in discourses on what is to be preserved and what is to be changed' (ibid., p. 5). A central argument for affrmative education put forward by Benner is 'that every rising generation is educated in a historically given social reality that frst demands recognition and that has to be acknowledged before it can be examined with regard to the possibility of change and called into question on the basis of arguments' (Benner, 2015, p. 146). Education in this sense, then, is meant to result in the conservative preservation of the status quo, that is, of established norms, traditional values, and existing social and political conditions. A second affrmative position is that of an education that is directed towards a future that is anticipated by the educating person in the form of a 'vicariously anticipated positivity […] that is to serve […] as a normative guideline for pedagogical action' (Benner, 2015, p. 147).

Benner attests to both positions that they start from an 'instrumental understanding of pedagogical practice' and consider education as a 'means to transmit or change given positivities' (ibid.). Accordingly, in both positions, education only represents the 'executive' that imposes 'non-pedagogical demands on pedagogical practice' (ibid.) and thus disregards the regulative principle of a 'pedagogical transformation of societal infuences and requirements' (Benner, Chap. 2, this volume, p. 12), meaning the transfer of societal infuences on pedagogical processes into pedagogically legitimate ones. Moreover, affrmative education disregards the constitutive principle of summoning to self-activity and thus makes transformation impossible.

A non-affrmative theory of education, on the other hand, strives to orient 'the intentionality of pedagogical action on the principle of the summoning to selfactivity and the functionality of social infuences under the idea of their pedagogical transformation' (Benner, 2015, p. 148). Pedagogical practice thus appears not as a mere executive of non-pedagogical demands, but in its 'impact on learning processes' (ibid.) of those to be educated. The core question of non-affrmative pedagogical interactions that Benner subsequently articulates is 'how adolescents, without simply being assigned responsibility for the consequential effects of their socialization, can be encouraged to engage in self-activity in such a way that their future destiny does not emerge as a direct result of their socialization but is instead mediated through the refection of such socialization' (Benner, 2015, p. 149). An adequate theory of education, one may conclude here, is one 'that understand[s] educative infuences as the promotion of self-refection, self-judgment, and selfaction and link[s] them back to pedagogical transformations of external demands on education' (Benner, Chap. 2, this volume, p. 15).

Benner understands Bildung as a 'human-world-relationship', understood as an 'interplay between the self and the world […], in which the human being

determines himself in engagement with the world' (Benner, 2015, p. 162). In this way, he follows both Humboldt's theory of Bildung as well as Rousseau's ideas of perfectibility and the Bildsamkeit of the human being. Bildung is to be understood in two ways. It encompasses an 'individual side of human Bildung and pedagogical interaction' and 'seeks to align it with the task of transforming indeterminate Bildsamkeit into experimental, self-chosen determinations in distinction from affrmative educational concepts that take the word of an unconditional recognition of subjectivity' (Benner, 2015, pp. 170 f.). Furthermore, the 'social side of Bildung' determines it 'in contrast to affrmative pedagogies of culture as that of a transformational activity of culture referring to all areas of human activity, for which, just as for individual Bildsamkeit, there is not and cannot be a well-founded, universally valid ideal of Bildung' (ibid.). Thus, it can be summarized that a theory of Bildung aligns the tasks of educatively supported processes of Bildung 'with regard to the concept of indeterminate Bildsamkeit and the nonhierarchical relationship between pedagogical practice and other forms of practice' (Benner, Chap. 2, this volume, p. 15).

#### **Bildung as the Formation of Opinions (Meinungsbildung)**

In the following, we will problematize Benner's theses and the presuppositions that underlie his approach. We ask under what conditions, presuppositions, and with which fgures of legitimization and justifcation Benner operates. Transformative Bildung is defned by Benner, as outlined above, as thinking, judging, and acting for oneself.5 Self-activity as a key principle of Bildsamkeit is thus linked to operations of judgment and critique that are founded on reason. Reasonable judgments, in turn, are based on the knowledge that can be derived and legitimized in a rational and cognitive way. In a certain way, it can be said that the subject of Bildung is frst and foremost constituted through this. The subject of Bildung, and thus modern, nonaffrmative Bildung itself, is founded and legitimized – historically and systematically – in a judging, refexive-critical transition from socialization to Bildung. According to Benner, the duality of socialization and Bildung is the basis of both the Bildungs-theoretical core question of non-affrmative interactions and the principle of self-activity, as well as the development and legitimization of a modern, public educational system. The subjective and societal fundaments of modern Bildung and education are thus based on a fundamental dualism and on the model of a rational subject that establishes a humane 'order of things' (Foucault, 2009) through rational judgments that legitimize and universalize the knowledge therein.

With the aim of a foundational-theoretical clarifcation and a social-theoretical extension, we will ask about the basic principles and preconditions of this approach.

5Benner has elsewhere argued for a pluralization of forms of judgment (cf. Benner, 2009) and made this idea fruitful for a didactics of science (cf. Benner, 2020).

The dualism between socialization on the one hand and Bildung, on the other hand, will be questioned by this social-theoretical extension to also rehabilitate habitual and doxic experiences in terms of a theory of Bildung.

Bildung as the formation of opinions is a central topic in Egon Schütz's philosophical, existential-critical phenomenology and theory of Bildung. In his habilitation, 'Freedom and Destiny. Refections on the Problem of Bildung from the Perspective of a Theory of Meaning' (Freiheit und Bestimmung. Sinntheoretische Refexionen zum Bildungsproblem) (Schütz, 1975) and in many of his seminar and lecture writings,6 Schütz pursues a critical archaeology and a deconstructive genealogy of the metaphysical presuppositions of pedagogy and of the theory of Bildung. His starting point is the life-world experience in relation to the world and to fellow human beings, which, in its existential signifcance and event character, asserts itself against scientifc, theoretical, medial, and political 'disguises' (Heidegger) and distortions. The outline of an 'existential-critical pedagogy' (Schütz, 2017) understands Bildung as a praxis against the background of anthropology that draws on Heidegger and Fink, according to which the human being as an 'existing relation of truth, world, and being' (ibid.) has to act and fail in cultural praxes. Like Benner, Schütz uses Eugen Fink's six dimensions of praxis as a systematic framework: love, work, play, and aesthetics, power and politics, as well as fnitude and education (cf. Fink, 1995, 1970, 2018). Unlike Benner, however, he understands these not in a praxeological way, but with Fink and Heidegger as dimensions of being in which ontological experiences of crisis, failure, wonder, and transformation can occur.7

Schütz begins his refections on the formation of opinions with a metaphysiccritical *deconstruction of the European presuppositions* of judgment.8 He shows that Bildung in the European tradition is committed to knowledge and knowledgeadequate truth, assuming an elementary dichotomy of knowledge and opinion (doxa). Opinion as holding-true (Für-wahr-halten) is thus not capable of truthness; Bildung as the formation of opinions would be an 'impossibility' (Schütz, 1990/1991, p. 3). This tradition-rich opposition of knowledge and opinion is reconstructed and deconstructed by Kant and Plato. In a close reading of Kant, Schütz demonstrates that, frst, the signifcance of opinion is connected to the question of the validity and truth of a judgment, and, second, that in it the reasoning subject with its subsuming power of judgment accounts for the certitude of the judgment.

6These unpublished writings can be found in the Egon Schütz Archive at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (https://www.erziehungswissenschaften.hu-berlin.de/de/allgemeine/egon-schuetzarchiv).

7Existential-critical pedagogy is therefore based on a non-subjectivist view of humanity and on a non-teleological theory of practice (cf. Brinkmann, 2017, Introduction).

8 In the following, we refer to considerations from a lecture held by Egon Schütz at the University of Cologne in the winter term of 1990/91 under the title "Bildung als Meinungsbildung" (Bildung as Formation of Opinion). In this lecture he focuses on the question of the formation of judgment and the plurality of forms of judgment (https://www.erziehungswissenschaften.hu-berlin.de/de/ allgemeine/egon-schuetz-archiv/verzeichnis-der-unveroeffentlichten-schriften/28).

Third, he shows that holding-true (Für-wahr-halten) means the explicit reference of a judgment back to a subject and, in the relationship of judgment, the validation of the judgment considered to be true. Kant distinguishes three hierarchically ascending forms of validity in judgment according to their level of reasonability and legitimacy: judgment of opinion, the judgment of belief, and judgment of knowledge. Schütz then states with Heidegger:

The guideline of the reconstruction [of opinion, belief, and knowledge, ed.], however, is [the modern model of, ed.] the certainty of knowledge, the 'certitudo', in which the moments of the 'certain', the 'agreed', the 'undoubted' resonates in a fundamental way. […] Here, holding true can (and must) put to test its general truthfulness and soundness. Within knowledge, the reason is general and sovereign – sovereign in the fact that it is general. And the sovereignty of the knowing reason consists not least in the fact that it not only knows what can be known, but that it also knows what cannot be known, but may reasonably be left to faith (Schütz, 1990/1991, p. 40).

Against the logocentric delegitimization of Meinen (i.e., of having an opinion) – and thus also of life-world habits and the habitualities based on them – Schütz brings Husserl's primordial experiential mode of pre-predicative judgment into play. According to Husserl, judgments are already made in the perceptions of the lived body, but not in a logifying mode. Going beyond this, we would like to present this aspect in more detail hereafter (cf. Brinkmann, 2021, pp. 178 f.). Husserl illustrates the life-world, pre-predicative judgment (cf. Husserl, 1975) by the example of color perception: colors are always already 'apprehended' (ibid., p. 75) in this kind of perception – as color properties of a certain thing, as colors of a surface with a certain texture, simply as stains on the carpet (cf. ibid.). Objects given in sensory experience are assemblages that can themselves refer to a genesis before they appear in experience. Sensory perceptions are thus based on a pre-predicative judgment that is a basic part of perception and experience, 'sensory awareness' (ibid., p. 67). 'Predicative judgments' (ibid., p. 21) and logical judgments build on this genetic process of judgment. They are based on lived bodily refexivity.9 Predicative judgments, however, subordinate perception and experience under a different, linguistic, 'grammatical' order.

Judging as holding-true (Für-wahr-halten) presupposes, according to Schütz and Heidegger, a difference of things, human beings, and relations, which are responded to in the act of differentiation. Against this backdrop, predicative reasoning can only be considered a specifc mode of general, inductive reasoning in perception and experience. It responds to a being-different that is prior to the act of differentiating. Differentiating in judgment is thus based on the being different of things, people, and relations. It is, in the truest sense of the word, an 'Ur-Teil', a division of an original whole that makes differentiation possible. Ontological being-different is the condition of the possibility of being able to differentiate as holding-for-true (cf. Schütz 1990/1991, 1996/1997). This ontological difference implies a

9At this point, Husserl differentiates between perceiving (Wahrnehmen) and experiencing (Erfahren). In the following we will not elaborate on this difference. We owe the following thoughts on Husserl to the suggestions of Severin Sales Rödel.

pre-predicative structure in the self-relationship, an elementary being bent back to oneself of the human being, that already shows itself in the simplest forms of perception up to the experiences of failure, of not-being-able-to, of forgetting, but also in moods and emotions.

If we take judgment as a praxis of human self-relation and as a mode of 'selfunderstanding' (Fink) in the world, then two important conclusions can be drawn: Predicative judgment in the mode of subjectivity and objectivity, of logic and grammar, is, frst, only one form of the praxis of differentiating, a praxis that performs and cultivates the cultural and symbolic forms of judgment. Secondly, the epistemological presuppositions of the logical forms of judgment are undermined. Judging no longer means representing the world in the mode of reason, reducing it to terms, or forcing it into a schematism. Instead, judging presupposes the non-representability of human beings and the world.10

For Schütz, this results in two consequences: First, a radical doubt of the universality and legitimacy of rational knowledge and the sciences based on it. Schütz demands a radical epoché (bracketing) – phenomenologically speaking – which not only points out the limits of logifying knowledge but also deconstructs it. Only after this epistemic-critical operation can other forms of judgment – lived bodily, religious, and above all aesthetic – gain equal importance. The non-hierarchicality of these forms of judgment emerges – in contrast to Benner's model – after and with the deconstruction of their metaphysical basic assumptions and can thus only emerge after the deconstruction of its underlying logocentrism and its forms of legitimation. Only through deconstruction can plural forms of judgment actually be thought non-hierarchically, i.e., also non-logocentrically. Secondly, if the opinion is no longer logocentrically placed under the suspicion of untruthfulness and provisionality, then - as Schütz makes clear with an image-theoretical interpretation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave based on Fink - doxic opinion and its different forms of judgment can be understood as 'image windows' (Schütz, 1990/1991, p. 79) to the world. After all, according to Schütz, it is in meaning that we make images of the world. With Fink, Schütz differentiates dream images, shadow images, allegorical images, artistic images, and so on. Images are seen as mediums of transcendence, of transcending the doxic, scientifc, and representational relations to an embracing whole. In Plato's Allegory of the Cave and the ascent into the light, an existential relationship is already suggested. For Fink, the image is seen as a medium in which – highly relevant in terms of a theory of Bildung – a relation to oneself, to others, and to the world is expressed, in which this relation is simultaneously revealed on the one hand and concealed on the other. The perspective on the beyonditself-ness of the image owes itself to an opening for the pre-predicative forms of judgment of opinion (cf. Fink, 2021 [1970]).

10Brinkmann has elsewhere phenomenologically determined life-world, doxic, individual, and social forms of judgment with regard to Gestalt-theory and with Heidegger, and has identifed the practice of judgment (die Übung des Urteilens) as an elementary form of the ability to distinguish (unterscheiden) in terms of a theory of Bildung and specifed it in didactical contexts (cf. Brinkmann, 2021).

#### 8 Between Doxa and Transformational Bildung: A Phenomenological…

The rehabilitation of opinion (doxa) implies at the same time rehabilitation of habit and habitus. Both dimensions are highly relevant in terms of the theory of Bildung and education. They can and must be separated from the dual of Bildung versus socialization. A frst indication of this social-theoretical turn is given by Günther Buck in his reconstruction of learning as experience. Buck also critically turns against Kant (cf. Buck, 2019, pp. 215 ff.): If in learning, Bildung, and education 'everything depends on conscious self-determination' (Buck, 2019, p. 215), then the socially and societally dimensionalized formation of habits can only be seen as heteronomy, i.e., as a foreign determination (Fremdbestimmung) (cf. ibid.). If one detaches habit formation and habitus from this normative bracket and expands their experience theoretically, it quickly becomes clear: habits and habitus, like all experiences, are based on a life-world horizon and bodily experience. Habit and habitus, as 'the structures of behavior' (Merleau-Ponty, 1963), are neither staticdetermining nor exclusively conservative-preserving structures. They are both structured and, at the same time, structuring structures (cf. Bourdieu, 2015, p. 98 f.). Habits are thus 'poorly understood if they are not also seen as intelligent skills open to innovation' (Buck, 2019, p. 217). Bildsamkeit from a phenomenological perspective is not an anthropological capacity of the subject that is directed towards perfectibility, nor is it a mere relational category between processes of Bildung and education (cf. Benner in this volume). Rather, Bildsamkeit can only be understood under the conditions of already experienced doxic, real-world experiences. These experiences are not based on the subject (as the *hypokeimenon*, the underlying), but rather originate in the social experiences and habits that precede the life-world, including the others in front of whom and with whom educational processes take place (cf. Ricken, 2012).11

#### **Doxa and Habitus: Habit and Transformation**

We will now revisit the relationship between experience, habit, and habitus and elaborate on it from a social-theoretical point of view with Bourdieu. With Schütz, Fink, and Buck, we have so far tried to clarify the signifcance of doxic opinion and

11From a phenomenological perspective, education can thus be described with Eugen Fink as lifeteaching (Lebenslehre) (Fink, 1970), which can be cultivated into an art of living (Lebenskunst) (cf. Brinkmann, 2021). Education pursues the goal of 'integration into the real' (in German Fink writes 'Einfügung ins Wirkliche'. The term 'Einfügung' implies the notion of 'Fuge' in the double meaning of the joint or seam of a wall and a fugue in a musical sense) by 'debating together (*dialegesthai*) the wonder of being in all its basic phenomena' (Fink, 1992, p. 181). The fundamental concept of educational science is therefore that of 'docility' ('Fügsamkeit' in German), 'which is opposed to the well-known fundamental concept of Bildsamkeit' (Fink, 1992, p. 181). The German term Fügsamkeit implies more than the English meaning of compliance and obedience, it basically describes the ability to be 'integrated'. 'Einfügung' into the real thus presupposes the 'Fügsamkeit' of the person who is being educated, similarly to the way Bildung presupposes Bildsamkeit.

its underlying pre-predicative judgments in terms of a theory of Bildung. This involves bracketing the logocentric fxation on a reasonable, rational subject. With Bourdieu, it now becomes possible to determine pre-predicative judgments as a mode of the habitus and to interpret them with regard to their social constitution.

For Bourdieu's theory of practice, the concept of doxa is of fundamental importance. He too distinguishes doxa as an opinion from rational, theoretical knowledge. He considers doxa to be an ensemble of opinions being assumed in a mode of prepredicative belief.12 They, therefore, 'are accepted as self-evident' (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 470) and evolve in 'ordinary acceptance of the usual order that goes without saying and therefore usually goes unsaid' (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 424).13 For Bourdieu, the doxic experience as a mode of accessing and approaching the world is of such central importance that he determines it as 'l'expérience première du monde sociale' (Bourdieu, 1979, p. 549), that is, as the primary experience of the social world.14 Similar to Schütz, Bourdieu also assumes that the doxa emerge through repeated and routinized experiences that result in the incorporation of the objective conditions. Bourdieu highlights the signifcance of the relation between habit and corporeality, pointing out, with recourse to Pascal, that 'custom makes all authority', in other words, that 'the social order is merely the order of bodies' (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 168). Unlike Schütz, Bourdieu does not examine existential self-relations and formative self-understandings, but social and societal relations. Bourdieu is also not interested in the Bildungs-theoretical relevance of formation and the opinion-based 'image windows' that we discussed with reference to Fink. He is not initially concerned with Bildung, but with the social dimension of being-in-the-world. This social dimension of judgment and opinion now becomes better understood when the doxa is analyzed in relation to the concept of habitus. This way, the implications of Bourdieu's approach for a theory of Bildung can be brought to light.

Bourdieu describes the habitus as a system of 'durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures' (Bourdieu, 1992, p. 53). It 'is constituted in practice' (ibid., p. 52), more specifcally in and through life-world practices and in the experiences that people make within these social practices. The position in the social space, as well as the different circumstances associated with these positions15 have the consequence that people make different experiences under the respective specifc social conditions of

12As an "ensemble des opinions assumées sur le mode de la croyance préréfexive" (Bourdieu, 1979, S. 60).

13 In the French original, Bourdieu writes: "la doxa, adhésion ordinaire à l'ordre ordinaire qui, allant de soi, va sans dire" (Bourdieu, 1979, S. 499). The fact that doxa here act "sans dire", i.e., unsaid, already indicates that the doxic opinions do not necessarily follow a logocentric logic.

14Bourdieu's conception of doxa thus shows close resemblance to Husserl's notion of the primordial mode of experience. Closely related to this is Husserl's notion of the "natural attitude," with which he describes the "totality of experiences, conceptions, and assumptions believed to be selfevident [...] which precedes all other settings of being and takes the world as really given" (Schneickert, 2013, p. 77).

15 In Bourdieu's theory, different individual circumstances can be captured as differences in the allocation of economic, cultural, and social capital (cf. Bourdieu, 2015, pp. 49-80).

existence of their growing up and of their lives. The individual habitus is thus largely adapted to the objective conditions under which it developed. The habitualized dispositions that develop from this as a 'system of schemes of perception, thought, and action' (Bourdieu, 1974, p. 153) then function 'as principles that generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. Objectively 'regulated' and 'regular' without being in any way the product of obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without being the product of the organizing action of a conductor' (Bourdieu, 1992, p. 53). Habitualized practices are thus specifcally not the result of reasonable, rational decisions, as action-theoretical approaches would presuppose. Rather, the habitus represents the 'principle of practical comprehension' not through a 'knowing consciousness' but through 'the practical sense of a habitus inhabited by the world it inhabits' (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 142). For Bourdieu, the social praxis in which the habitus is established is 'the site of the dialectic of the opus operatum and the modus operandi' (Bourdieu, 1992, p. 52), that is, the place where performed practical actions as products or results, on the one hand, and the way they are performed and executed, on the other, come together in a meaningful way. Praxis takes place in the mode of habitualized routines, in which one's own life circumstances, as well as the experiences that are made and that are potentially possible within them, are understood in their practical logic and meaning: 'The homogeneity of habitus that is observed within the limits of a class of conditions of existence and social conditionings is what causes practices and works to be immediately intelligible and foreseeable, and hence taken for granted' (ibid., p. 58).

The habitus can thus be understood as a 'practical sense' ('sense pratique', is also the original title of Bourdieu's The Logic of Practice), as a sense for the appropriateness and meaning of praxis and its practices. For the most part, this practical sense is not explicitly taught through teaching, instruction, or intentional education, but rather in the mode of an 'implicit pedagogy' (ibid., p. 69). Through this nonexplicit, often pre-predicative mode, 'schemes are able to pass directly from practice to practice without moving through discourse and consciousness' (ibid., p. 74). Bourdieu thus describes an implicit mode of transmission by which the meaning of praxis and the ways of performing practices are practised, exercised, and incorporated in a process of 'internalization of externality' (ibid., p. 45). The social praxis in which these experiences are made must be understood as a bodily praxis. It is performed through repeated and repeatable practices that are carried out *with* the body and whose immanent 'social sense' is thereby incorporated and inscribed *in* the body. In this sense, the habitus is 'embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history' (ibid. p. 56); it is 'the socially made body' (Bourdieu & Warquant, 1992, p. 127).

The power of habitualized doxa, therefore, lies in the fact that they lead to an unquestioned acceptance of their conditions. Social practices understood in this way, always imply a pre-predicative judgment as well, in that the pre-found objective conditions of the praxis and the way in which the praxis itself is performed provide grounds for the possibility of social distinction, that is, the judgment of legitimate and illegitimate practices in their respective 'subtle differences'.16 The life-world and routinized praxis thus become palpable in its judging dimension. In addition to the dispositions of perceiving, thinking, and acting, Bourdieu also writes elsewhere of dispositions of 'appréciation' (Bourdieu, 1997, p. 204), that is, of evaluation or judgment. The ensemble of dispositions would thus have to be expanded, on the one hand, by the dimension of judgment. On the other hand, it becomes clear that in Bourdieu's perspective, comparable to Husserl's primordial experiential mode of pre-predicative judgment, every perception, thought, and action already implies certain pre-predicative judgments. Social judgments are constantly made in the habitual mode: the habitus judges the appropriateness and legitimacy of people's subjective perceptions, their own experiences, the expressions they make, the objective conditions to which they are exposed, as well as the practices of others. Framed in this way, following our discussion of Schütz, the habitus can also be understood as an implicit opinion that becomes explicit in social practices. These judgments are thus expressed not only, or even predominantly, in theoretical and explicit judgments, e.g., in a political opinion, but primarily in very practical terms in the subtle distinctions of life-world praxis, for example, of eating or dressing.17 The habitus as a kind of practical opinion thus fundamentally implies a doxic, prepredicative, implicit, and embodied mode of judgment. This way, Bourdieu criticizes a one-sided focus on logical forms of judgment and rational knowledge and, like Husserl and Schütz, rehabilitates lived-bodily and social modes of judgment as a way of accessing and relating to the world.

According to Benner's understanding, the genesis of the habitus and its modes of functioning described up to this point fall into the realm of affrmative socialization. According to Benner, however, it is the responsibility and characteristic of pedagogical praxis to transcend the socializing infuences on adolescents. Thus, for Benner, the habitualized doxa only become relevant in terms of a theory of Bildung when they are explicitly and cognitively responded to. Only then a transformation of the existing relationship between the self and the world can occur. This transformational moment is determined both as a normative goal of pedagogical processes and as a constitutive characteristic for practices to be recognized as pedagogical practices at all. In this way, Benner can defne education as a summoning to selfactivity, that is, as a call to critically and explicitly evaluate one's own experiences of socialization and to relate to them refexively in order to give oneself one's own purpose in engagement with the world. A perspective on a theory of Bildung

16Even if the title signifcantly differs from the French original ("La distinction - Critique Sociale du Jugement", Bourdieu 1979) and the English translation ("Distinction - A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste", Bourdieu 1984), the German title of Bourdieu's Distinction, 'Die feinen Unterschiede' (Bourdieu, 1982) (literally meaning 'the subtle differences'), captures an interesting point.

17This becomes apparent in Bourdieu's research in "La Distinction - Critique Sociale du Jugement" (Bourdieu, 1979), which prominently carries the term judgement in its title. From the Latin meaning of *distinctio* as distinction or differentiation, the proximity to judging as distinguishing can also be derived.

conceived in such a way would only allow us to think of Bildung as an interruption, a transgression, or a transformation of the habitus.18 We would now like to conclude, however, by showing that routines, habits, doxa, change, transformation, and Bildung are not categorically mutually exclusive, and that, in fact, repetitions can also be characteristic of experiences and processes of Bildung (cf. Brinkmann, 2017).19 Following Schütz and Bourdieu, we thus try to show that both perspectives are enclosed in the formation of opinions and in the habitus.

Bourdieu's 'emphasis on the stability of the social' (Schäfer, 2016, p. 137) earned him strong criticism, which repeatedly focuses on the 'assumed persistence of incorporated schemes of perception, thought, and action' (Schäfer, 2016, p. 139) (cf. Liebau, 2009; Rieger-Ladich, 2004, 2005). Reading Bourdieu himself, it becomes clear that he does not understand and does not want habitus to be understood as deterministic. The most fundamental differentiation, that already makes this distinction apparent, is that he speaks of *dispositions*. Bourdieu writes that the habitus functions 'not along the paths of a mechanical determinism, but within the constraints and limits initially set on its inventions' (Bourdieu, 1992, p. 55). He notes that 'habitus is diffcult to understand only so long as one remains locked in the usual antinomies – which the concept of the habitus aims to transcend – of determinism and freedom, conditioning and creativity, consciousness and the unconscious, or the individual and society' (ibid., p. 55). Thus, habitus is not deterministic; rather, it is characterized by an "openness' to failure, reinterpretation, and confict' (Reckwitz, 2003, p. 294). Closedness and openness thus do not describe mutually exclusive opposites, but 'two sides of the 'logic of praxis" (ibid.). Bourdieu, therefore, criticizes a dualistic perspective that categorically distinguishes between stability (describable as an affrmation in Benner's sense) and change (corresponding to Bildung in Benner's case). For him, habitus always implies both an active (structuring) and a passive (structuring) side. He highlights that the habitus changes 'constantly in response to new experiences', and that the habitualized dispositions are 'subject to a kind of permanent revision' (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 161).

The body, or rather the Leib, plays a central role in this, as it does for Husserl and Schütz. Speaking with Husserl, the lived body is both the 'expressive body' (Husserl, 1989, 259) and the 'zero point' (ibid., p. 166), i.e., the medium of perception of the world and the 'pathic and passive sides of embodied experience' (Brinkmann et al., 2019, p. 3). Bourdieu writes that with a 'Heideggerian play on words, one might say that we are disposed because we are exposed'. He continues:

18This way of understanding Bildung is very prevalent in the current German-speaking discourse on the theory of Bildung. Here, Bildung is directly interpreted as a transformation of the habitus (cf. Koller, 2011).

19Here, Bourdieu meets with temporal-phenomenological analyses of the "changing strength of repetition" (Waldenfels, 2001). This way, the Eurocentric opposition of habit on the one hand and on the other hand freedom or creativity in repetition can be undermined: Every repetition already implies a modifcation or a "shift" *décalage*), a discontinuity in the continuity of experience (cf. Brinkmann, 2020).

It is because the body is […] exposed and endangered in the world, faced with the risk of emotion, lesion, suffering, and sometimes death, and therefore obliged to take the world seriously […] that it is able to acquire dispositions that are themselves an openness to the world, that is, to the very structures of the social world of which they are the incorporated form (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 140f.).

Disposition and exposition, habits and change, routine and openness, or in pedagogical terms, habitus and Bildung, are thus not only *not* mutually exclusive but are rather inseparably related to each other.

We have already pointed out with Buck that customary and habitualized experiences must be understood as open to innovation. The habitus also implies a moment of creativity; it can relate to new or unknown practical situations and produce new patterns or varieties of social practices. For Bourdieu, however, this openness of the habitus must always be seen in relation to the constraints and limits initially set on its inventions (Bourdieu, 1992, p. 55). Bourdieu thus addresses the limits of the social constitution of human praxis. At this point, Bourdieu's theory becomes graspable as a social-theory that makes it possible to include the social conditions and preconditions under which human praxis takes place. This allows us to follow up on the rehabilitation of habitual and doxic experiences elaborated by Schütz and extend it in a social-theoretical way with Bourdieu's perspective. Social relations of power and domination, of social inequality, of distinction and social privilege, which are the preconditions of every doxic experience of the self and the world, can thus be included and refected in their signifcance for the processes of Bildung. Referring back to Benner, we can thus show with Bourdieu that the non-affrmative processes of Bildung are not fully understood if we understand them exclusively as pedagogical actions initiated by non-affrmative education as a summoning to self-activity. Rather, it becomes clear that habit, doxa, and habitus also hold great and so far often overlooked potential for Bildung. This can be grasped by recourse to Schütz's concept of the formation of opinions. From this point of view, Bildung as the formation of opinions would have to include and rehabilitate the doxic experience of the world and thus both the pre-predicative and image-related as well as the societal and social dimensions of judgment.

#### **Conclusion**

Taking Benner's thoughts on the relationship between affrmative and nonaffrmative pedagogical praxis as a starting point, we have questioned his approach in terms of its presuppositions and limitations. Drawing on Schütz, it became clear that Benner grounds Bildung on cognitive forms of judgment that are undermined by pre-predicative judgment and opinion. At the same time, this calls into question the underlying notion of the strong subject that is being constituted in cognitive judgment. Benner traces the processes of Bildung back to the practices of nonaffrmative education in the form of a summoning to self-activity. This understanding of Bildung can be extended by considering life-worldly, pre-predicative,

pre-linguistic, and embodied judgments in their signifcance for Bildung. To do so, the fundamental dual between Bildung and socialization, transformation and repetition, and the model of the rational subject that legitimates and universalizes a cognitive 'order of things' (Foucault, 2009) in rational judgments must be questioned. With a perspective on Bildung as the formation of opinions, doxic opinion and habitus can also be grasped in terms of their relevance for Bildung. Moreover, with Bourdieu, it becomes possible to include the social dimension of doxic opinion and thus also the conditions of power and dominance, e.g., in the form of social inequality or distinction, dimensions that are only hinted at in Benner's theory.20 We selfcritically admit at this point that this extension is associated with a twofold diffculty, the solution to which is yet to be found. With the phenomenological and practicetheoretical extensions, we are at risk of losing the systematic sharpness of the terms used by Benner, a sharpness on which the great impact and reception of his General Pedagogy appear to be based. On the other hand, this extension also has consequences for the determination of normative aspects of theories of Bildung and education. Ultimately, especially in postmodern, post-democratic, or what have meanwhile become 'post-factual' times, we would like to admit that not all opinions might or should be valued equally and that there are degrees of rationality in the formation of opinions, which are currently being vehemently disputed.

We hope to have shown with Schütz and Bourdieu that processes of Bildung are not exclusively based on discontinuous, interrupting, and transformation-oriented summonings to self-activity but are frst and foremost also made possible by repetitive, routinized, and habitualized dispositions and the pre-predicative formation of opinions. This constitutes a self-relation that is always already open in varying degrees – to the world, to others, and to oneself – and that is practically constituted and cultivated in opinions.

#### **References**

Benner, D. (2009). Auf der Suche nach einer Didaktik der Urteilsformen und einer auf ausdifferenzierte Handlungsfelder bezogenen partizipatorischen Erziehung. *Pädagogische Korrespondenz, 39*, 5–20.

Benner, D. (2015). *Allgemeine Pädagogik. Eine systematisch-problemgeschichtliche Einführung in die Grundstruktur pädagogischen Denkens und Handelns* (8 rev. ed.). Beltz Juventa.

Benner, D. (2020). Umriss der allgemeinen Wissenschaftsdidaktik. In *Grundlagen und Orientierungen für Lehrerbildung, Unterricht und Forschung*. Beltz Juventa.

Bourdieu, P. (1974). *Zur Soziologie der symbolischen Formen*. Suhrkamp.

Bourdieu, P. (1979). *La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement*. Les Éd. de Minuit.

Bourdieu, P. (1992). *The logic of practice* (R. Nice, Trans.). Stanford University Press.

20The consequences of this for a concept of education (Erziehung) that is not exclusively grounded in explicit and intentional practices are explored in Johannes Türstig's dissertation project (also cf. Türstig, 2021).

Bourdieu, P. (1997). Méditations pascaliennes. In *Collection liber*. Seuil.

Thompson, C. (2020). *Allgemeine Erziehungswissenschaft. Eine Einführung*. Kohlhammer.

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## **Chapter 9 Hermeneutics in the Non-affrmative Theory of Education**

**Mari Mielityinen-Pachmann and Michael Uljens**

**Abstract** This chapter explores how the general theory of hermeneutics may help us to clarify how education and the process of Bildung relate. To this end, the chapter consists of two sections. The frst section outlines why we need different notions of *subjectivity* and *intersubjectivity* for talking about the premises of pedagogical interaction and, in addition, about the results of Bildung. Three pairs of subjectivity and intersubjectivity are identifed: as anthropological preconditions; as notions emanating from socialisation into a life-world; and fnally, as self-refexive categories. This frst section views non-affrmative pedagogical intervention and Bildsamkeit as mediating between three pairs of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. The second section deepens the above reasoning by exploring how *hermeneutics* can function as a complementary approach for clarifying non-affrmative pedagogy. More precisely, how are the central questions of hermeneutics constitutive of and present in a theory of non-affrmative education?

**Keywords** Hermeneutics · Intersubjectivity · Bildsamkeit

#### **Introduction**

As an institutional form of education, *teaching* invites the learner to engage in refective interpretation of cultural norms and contents. In making the world accessible from various perspectives, teaching itself features unique forms of mediating interpretative activity and understanding.

e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
M. Mielityinen-Pachmann

Jena University Hospital, Jena, Germany

M. Uljens (\*)

Faculty of Education and Welfare Studies, Åbo Akademi University, Vaasa, Finland e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
This chapter explores how general theory of hermeneutics may help us to clarify how education and the process of Bildung relate. To this end, the chapter consists of two sections. The frst section outlines why we need different notions of *subjectivity* and *intersubjectivity* for talking about the premises of pedagogical interaction and, in addition, about the results of Bildung. This frst section views non-affrmative pedagogical intervention and Bildsamkeit as mediating between three different forms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity.

The second section deepens the above reasoning by exploring how *hermeneutics* can function as a complementary approach for clarifying non-affrmative pedagogy. More precisely, how are the central questions of hermeneutics constitutive of and present in a theory of non-affrmative education (Benner, 1995)?

#### **Education and Bildung vs. Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity**

In any education theory, there is an obvious need to explain what a pedagogical intervention is and how it contributes to the individual's establishment and development of personal identity and, in this process, how the individual comes to share the world with others. However, in order for education to be possible in practice, we typically assume that teaching relies on the existence of an already existing or shared life-world or some other form of mutuality (symmetry) between self and other. How else would it be possible to reach out to the other in her or his otherness, if we did not share the world in some fundamental sense? Yet, at the same time, we think that the very process itself is necessary for establishing such a shared world. This indicates a paradox: as a premise, we need to assume the existence of something (a shared world) that only comes into being through the process itself. A way to solve this paradox is to make a distinction between a shared world existing at the beginning of the pedagogical process and a different shared world, as the consequence of the process.

A similar paradox seems to be present when discussing subjectivity. In viewing teaching as the summoning of the learner's self-activity, it seems we need to assume the existence of an Other, or a subject, being addressed. However, at the same time, it is only by addressing the other that the subject develops into a cultural being, i.e., becomes somebody. Again, the constellation is paradoxical: as a premise, education seem to assume the existence of something that only results from education itself. In this case, too, there seems to be a need to make a distinction between some version of subjectivity at the beginning of the education process, and a different subjectivity at its end.

The above reasoning indicates that we need to accept some form of *symmetry* or radical intersubjectivity as well as some form of *asymmetry* or radical subjectivity, not only as a starting point for a theory of education but also as something education aims at or results in. In other words, at the beginning of the educational process, we share the world to some extent, but not totally, as we all are different from each other. At the end of the educational process, we fnd ourselves again as subjects that differ from others in new ways but also fnd us as subjects that have come to share the world in new ways. To conclude, at the beginning of the educational process, we are the same, yet we are also different from each other. But, at the same time, even if it is through the process of education that we *become* the same, we also become different from each other. Sometimes this is expressed by saying that enculturation and individuation are two sides of the same process, or parallel. In this light, education is about *being* and *becoming* the same (intersubjectivity) and different (subjectivity). Expressed a little cryptically, the paradox of education is that we are what we become, and that we become what we are – namely the same and different.

Yet, for analytical reasons, the chapter keeps up the distinction between Bildung as primary socialisation and Bildung as secondary socialisation. Bildung as primary socialisation refers to growing into a culture through participatory activity in its ordinary practises and habits. Bildung as secondary socialisation refers to pedagogical refection, intentionally making the taken-for-granted life-world experiences an object for refection with the help of general knowledge or others' experiences. For these reasons, there is a need for different versions of both subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Second, the dynamics between these different versions of subjectivity and intersubjectivity can partly be explained by pedagogical concepts: 'recognition', *Bildsamkeit*, 'summoning to self-activity'.

#### *What Comes First, Subjectivity or Intersubjectivity?*

Historically, the previous reasoning refer to the debate of how to relate subjectivity and intersubjectivity, partly originated in J. G. Fichte's critique of Kant's transcendental philosophical idealism (Williams, 1997; Uljens, 2001). Fichte's contribution was to see the individual's empirical *consciousness of freedom* as intersubjectively mediated by the Other. The self, he explained, becomes an object for itself, or aware of itself as free, only by being recognised as such by another. Kant had argued that although humans live under the infuence of the external world, they are not determined by it. The human being always has a choice. But how should these choices be made? Kant assumed the existence of the moral law of which humans are aware a priori, i.e., before experience. He then assumed that the individual may choose to follow or not follow, the moral law. According to the moral law and its *categorical imperative,* an individual should never treat other human beings only as means to one's own ends. Further, the individual should only act according to principles that deserve the status of being universal laws. In any case, given her freedom, the individual can make her own choices, such as whether to act against these principles. For Fichte, the critical point was the reference to an a priori *awareness* of the moral law, that is, an awareness of these laws before empirical experience (Fichte, 2000). In doing this, Fichte argued, Kant thereby, in fact, included a reference to a shared and experiential, intersubjective, life-world. After all, the moral law said something about how individuals' were to relate to each other. Thus, awareness of the principles of the moral law was not given *before* experience but was instead constituted intersubjectively. By herself, Fichte argued, the subject cannot become aware of herself *as* free. Instead, the individual develops awareness of herself as being free, and as having a will by being recognised and treated *as* free, while also recognising others as free. If the individual's awareness of herself as free and as a reasoning subject is dependent on the other's recognition and related education, the conclusion is that nobody has the *right* to act in ways that make the Other's freedom impossible.

Not only is it implied, in Fichte's reasoning, that this right of the Other is to be *recognised*, but also that the Other should be *summoned* to exercise her freedom. Educating the *will* means thus to summon the Other's potentiality to develop awareness of herself as being free and to refect on one's freedom in relation to Others' freedom. Regardless of how the subject responds to summons, she becomes aware of herself as an individual having a will and acting out from a will, which means to make choices and act according to them.

From an education point of view, the above reasoning is central, as the dilemma with transcendental idealism (radical freedom philosophy) is educationally problematic. If the subject were able to constitute herself as an object *for* herself *by* herself, this would resemble contemporary radical constructivism, which, in principle, leaves very little, if any, room for pedagogical infuences. In fact, in a radical constructivist philosophy of mind, education is neither possible nor necessary.

Today, we can broadly identify at least two different but complementary subjectphilosophical positions in the philosophy of mind. According to a so-called *egological* or phenomenological conception, 'the Other' is constituted by the experiencing subject (Uljens, 2002). This is the traditional subject-philosophical position (Crossley, 1996). A kind of reversed position, though still subject-centered, is recognition-oriented philosophy of mind, as represented by Hegel (Frank, 1991, 459f; Williams, 1997). Here, the self *as recognised by the other,* is of primordial signifcance. In this case, it seems, the Other's recognition of the self, subordinates the subjects coming into being to the Other's recognising act, so that the Self is partly constituted by the Other's experience. In this reading, the Self would be dependent on the Other (Honneth, 1996).

Philosophers like Merleau-Ponty, Buber, Bakhtin, Mead, and Taylor have all challenged the subject-centered, individualistic, or rationalistic approach (Uljens & Kullenberg, 2021). Social philosophy in general has witnessed a growth in interest in intersubjectivity (Varga & Gallagher, 2012). Such *intersubjective* positions have in common the fact that before subjectivity, there is something fundamental that is shared. This can be language, norms, practices, or culture. This seems a very reasonable point of departure as long as we talk about enculturated subjects like children attending school, who already are in possession of e.g., language. The strength of an intersubjective point of departure becomes obvious precisely in relation to language. If we separate between the individual's acts and the meaning of these acts, in ways that resemble the distinction between matter and meaning in didactics, then the *meaning* of the individual's acts is partly dependent on somebody else's interpretation. Taking part in such interpretations then helps the subject identify herself differently. In this view, the intersubjective relation becomes a condition for subjectivity. However, this explanation assumes that participating subjects *already* share a common language or culture for this interaction to be possible. To the extent we already share something, we cannot, by pedagogical means or otherwise, move into this shared world; we are already there. To the extent that we already share the world, education appears obsolete.

However, intersubjectivity does not need to be limited to sharing cultural practices, languages, or the like. Even for Husserl, there existed two versions of intersubjectivity. On the one hand, there was a taken-for granted everyday world where we operate and where we are in a 'natural attitude', and, on the other, transcendental intersubjectivity, in the form of general knowledge (Uljens & Kullenberg, 2021; Bengtsson, 2001; Merleau-Ponty, 1962). Yet Husserl, in the end, accepts a transcendentally founded epistemology based on an unconditional ego.

In contrast, following Merleau-Ponty (1962), perception as such may be considered intersubjective. Perception "as an opening to another that functions as a prerefexive, pre-objective, and pre-egological level, the solipsist idea is challenged about private perceptual worlds" (1996, 29). In this light, intersubjectivity is not reducible to a result of a process of Bildung, but is rather a constitutive aspect of human experience that is given and cannot be thought away.

The conclusion from the previous reasoning is that, rather than taking *either* subjectivity or intersubjectivity as its point of departure, we may, in non-affrmative theory of education, argue in favor of an educational approach that distinguishes between different forms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity (see Fig. 9.1). As argued in more detail elsewhere (Uljens, 2001; Uljens & Kullenberg, 2021), we may discern between pre-linguistic subjectivity, cultural subjectivity (identity, Me) and (self-)refexive subjectivity. Corresponding to this, we may discern between corporeally constituted (pre-linguistic) intersubjectivity, linguistic or experiential life-world intersubjectivity, and (self)-refexive intersubjectivity (Uljens, 2001; also

**Fig. 9.1** Bildsamkeit and summons as mediating practices as related to various forms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity (following Uljens, 2008)

in Uljens & Ylimaki, 2017). While the frst two forms are given by birth, the following forms are experientially and historically established and developed.

What Schleiermacher then calls *spontaneity* and *receptivity* are here interpreted as fundamental assumptions about what it means to be a human being (philosophical anthropology). The individual is experientially and experimentally oriented towards the world, simultaneously experiencing it and trying to make sense of it. This chapter reminds of and refers to Merleau-Ponty's idea that the human prelinguistic being in the world constitutively involves a fundamental interpersonal or intersubjective dimension. This is a corporeally constituted pre-linguistic intersubjectivity. The corporeal relation between the mother and child, broken by birth, continues between the child and rests on an experiential level of sharing the world. As the newborn child recognises the mother's voice better than other voices, in this sense, the subject also shares something experientially constituted.

The frst forms of rudimentary spontaneity that the child demonstrates are directed by refex, not will. Today, we know from empirical research that how the newborn is stimulated (or summoned) also affects the biological development of the brain. However, the child's existence itself, in front of the parents, is a challenge or moral call to care, which as such establishes a shared world. Care and love, as a response to the existence of the child, contribute to creating an experiential, intersubjective world. This original summons on the child's part is of course not intentional or aware, but it still raises a moral challenge for the caretaker – how to live up to this moral responsibility? On the other hand, for sound self-esteem to develop, affrmative recognition (love) of the child is crucial.

Very much of the caretaker's way of relating to the child is obviously an example of recognition based and tactful summoning. Just by calling the child by a name or treating the child *as if* it had a will, *as if* it would be capable of what she might become capable of (Benner, this volume), the child develops a sense of herself.

At the left side of Fig. 9.1, there is a distinction between spontaneity, receptivity, and *Bildsamkeit*. This is a reminder that *Bildsamkeit* sometimes in philosophical anthropology refers to what constitutes a human being's existence in the world. It also refers to an activity that is a response to pedagogical summons. In the frst meaning, Bildsamkeit would be something that the pedagogue recognises as a condition, i.e., reminding of Schleiermacher's spontaneity and receptivity. In its second meaning, Bildsamkeit is a relational notion that binds the summoning and the learner's activity together. In this respect, a pedagogical space is co-constructed around a topic, matter, or problem – something pointed at.

Figure 9.1 reminds us that summoning and Bildsamkeit leading to the child's ability to say *Me* and to share the world by e.g., participation as a linguistic subject, are examples of the double-sided process of Bildung, establishing a sense of Me and We. For analytical reasons only, subjectivity and intersubjectivity are distinct from each other.

From this follows that pedagogically addressing the *newborn* and the *encultured subject*, frst, by *recognising* the Other's potentiality to self-activity, and second, by pedagogical summons of the Other's self-activity, is in principle the same (A and B in the fgure), but, again, for *analytical* reasons kept apart. Some might like to call

the left side of the fgure for socialisation into shared practices, while the right side of the fgure would indicate the pedagogical work in public education aiming at, new forms of refective subjectivity and intersubjectivity.

Following the Finnish philosopher Johan Vilhelm Snellman's pedagogical analyses (Snellman, 1861), education of the home is represented as a normative, primary socialisation to prevailing praxis and normative systems. This would be an example of affrmative pedagogy. By contrast, the school's task was, according to Snellman, to help the learner move into the *world of shared or general knowledge,* through which existing normative systems may become objects for refection. This would be a question of secondary socialisation, which transcends the education of the home. Although this distinction is valuable, it would be a simplifcation to say that the home nurtures and school teaches, so that all educational activity in the home is affrming, while all activities in the school would be non-affrming. On the contrary, it is easy to identify non-affrmative practices in any home. The same is true for school. Numerous studies show how schools contribute to the unrefectively passing on of normative patterns of practice. Consequently, the distinction between affrmative and non-affrmative pedagogical activity becomes an analytic tool for discussing both caretakers' and teachers' pedagogical activity.

On the right side of the fgure, we fnd non-affrmative pedagogy, accepting emancipatory pedagogy, while aiming at a self-determined subject that is aware of her identity, but now in a refexive or self-formational sense, understanding and respecting others. On the collective, intersubjective side, Figure 9.1 reminds us that formal education expands beyond enculturing subjects into cultural practices. It is about learning the value of conceptual knowledge, art, political life, etc. as various forms of collaborative self-refexive activities. As the individual's self-image depends on social interaction and the ability to engage in the discerning and critical refection necessary for autonomous thinking, these are considered individual rights, then education is a response to the moral demand that arises from accepting these rights (Fichte, 2000).

In this frst section, we pointed at various notions of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, valuable for identifying premises and consequences of education, as well as how pedagogical interventions in the form of non-affrmative summoning and the process of Bildung operate as mediating processes between these forms. The next section deepens the analysis by opening up hermeneutic dimensions of the premises, the process, and the aims of Bildung and education.

#### **Hermeneutics in Education as Summoning of Self-Activity and Bildung**

As the tradition of hermeneutic pedagogy is extensive, it is hardly surprising that the approaches to understanding of *understanding* differs radically from one philosopher to another (e.g. the hermeneutics of Schleiermacher to Gadamer, or further to poststructuralist hermeneutics as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Francois Lyotard). This chapter does not rely on only one representative of the tradition; still, our considerations are mostly based on classical hermeneutics (e.g., Schleiermacher, Nohl, Bollnow), but also on critical hermeneutics as developed by Klaus Mollenhauer.

We begin by looking at how interpretation and understanding, as aspects of pedagogical activity, mediate between individuals and society and how they are constitutive of the educational relationship between teacher and learner. As a kind of conclusion, we claim that understanding is not only a part of the process but also one of the *aims* of *educational activity* – in many different ways.

#### *Bildung as an Intepretative Process*

A frst point of departure is to perceive Bildung as the subject's dynamic relation to the world, to others, and to him/herself. It includes an experiential (*Erlebnis/das Erleben*), a refexive and a communicative dimension. Following Dilthey's theory of pedagogical hermeneutics, 'experience' enables access to the world and to others, including emotion, perception, judgement, and will (Uhle, 1981, 9). 'Experience' is a basic category describing how the subject is or exists in the world and in relation to it. The *process* of Bildung is a change in one's experience or identity, or more generally, a modifcation in the way we see the world around us as well as ourselves within it.

Second, Bildung involves the subject's *interpretative activity*. We can only interpret and understand phenomena *expressed* by other subjects. In this respect, the core of pedagogical hermeneutics is the notion of *text* (or an expression, a sign, etc.) (e.g., Rittelmeyer & Parmentier, 2001, 1). Thus, an important point of interpretation is that language is the medium.1 Both parties of the pedagogical relationship live reciprocally in the medium of language. Already the frst part of the word *interpretation* reveals the relationality of Bildung and the reciprocity of the process. Drawing on Gadamer's understanding of understanding, Kerdemann (1998, 264) concludes that "to understand, rather, is to participate in an event of time and tradition in which common meaning comes to be realized in the to-and-fro" of language and dialogue. The efforts to make sense of our own experiences of the world, of others, and ourselves include *learning to express* one's experiences in language so they may be communicated and shared with others. In this respect, others contribute to establishing the meaning of our experiences. The possibility of education lies in this communicative process.

Third, the professional teacher's role cover interpretation and understanding on *behalf* of the learner in relation to external interests as codifed in a curriculum. In

1Humboldt especially emphasized the linguistic aspect of Bildung. Also, philosophers like Herder emphasized the role of language in the process of Bildung (e.g., Benner, & Brüggen, 2004, 193).

this, cultural mediation is at the core of the intergenerational and cultural-historically situated education processes. In this respect, teachers do not only interpret the world for themselves as subjects but also operate as professional interpreters and mediators between culture and the learners. Techers refect on how to open up or make relevant parts of the culture accessible for the learners and also how to engage students in processes of Bildung. Klaus Mollenhauer description of *representation* in "Forgotten Connections" (Mollenhauer, 1983) demonstrates, how education in general, but the school as an institution in particular, 'simplify' the complexity of the world. It represents elements of the reality 'packed' in the curriculum.

As observed in the frst section, in education, for pedagogical communication to be possible, it presupposes initial intersubjectivity and subjectivity. As observed, reaching shared 'understanding' is both a central *aim*, and is parallel to the learners own individuation. Understanding is also a part of the pedagogical *process* itself, both on the behalf of teachers and students. In carrying out such mediation, the teacher pay attention not only to the learner's present experiences, but also the learner's future.

#### *Education as Mediation Between Individual and Society*

Hermeneutical pedagogy features dialectic thinking between different poles. It is by operating in the tension between these poles, like the individual and society, that offers the possibility to enable growth of personality. Expressed in Wilhelm von Humboldt's words, to strive for the "highest and most proportional Bildung of his capabilities (Kräfte) to a whole".

In this mediation between the individual and society, the school operates as "middle sphere" having an educational role between family and "a real world" in preparing the younger generation. In this work, the teacher is forced to continuously balance between the various ideals, requirements and expectations of the homes, the society, and individual needs and aspirations.

To operate in this "middle sphere" is challenging. Just to give some examples. Should the teacher give his pupil a good grade in order to encourage him, or should the teacher prepare his pupil to face a hard life outside of the school by giving the student a lower grade? (see Dörpinghaus et al., 2006, 86). Another example, pointed out by O.F. Bollnow (1952), is that in the pedagogical relation, *patience* plays an important role. The educator has sometimes to "waste time" in waiting for the child to carry out a certain action. Pedagogical patience refects tactfulness and sensitivity towards the learner's activities, but is often weighted against how it pays off in the future perspective. Schleiermacher also reminds that in education we sometimes have "to sacrifce the moment for the future" (orig. Schleiermacher, 1820/21, KGA II/13, S. 394). Thus, to work in this "middle sphere", i.e., in the tensions between different expectations, ambitions, evaluations, requirements, and limitations, may be frustrating for the teacher. This imperfection is very familiar to teachers, who understand that the all aims of the curriculum cannot be reached within given frames, caused by a number of different reasons other than their own ambitions: problems in classroom management, too little time, inadequate learning materials, problems of learning, or something else (Danner, 2006, 226). These examples demonstrate that mediation is not a technical thing but requires continuous discerning thought and moral positioning, weighing interests and ambitions. It is not about just affrming things. Rather, the openness that follows from the human being indeterminate (Bildsamkeit) points to a hope for the future. Yet, what the learner may reach, we cannot know.

#### *Understanding: The Dialectics Between Being, Thinking, and Knowing*

As a concept in hermeneutical pedagogy, *understanding* is defned quite differently. In what follows, we provide some insights into pedagogical understanding in Schleiermacher's hermeneutics and theory of education.

We can hardly properly understand Schleiermacher's hermeneutics without *dialectics*. For him, *dialectics* encompasses his entire philosophical system and is obviously part of his epistemology. The main feature of this dialectic is the polarity between 'being' (Sein) and 'thinking' as well as 'knowledge' (Wissen). Dialectics is based on two manifestations of the *absolute*, whereby 'being' corresponds to 'nature' and 'thinking' and 'knowing' correspond to 'reason' (Fischer, 2001, 75). From this, one might conclude that 'being' is found in nature, and 'reason' is what forms thoughts and knowledge. However, Schleiermacher did not share this idea. Rather, what *is* or exists is only "as (far as it has) been thought of". On the other hand, thinking or knowing are possible through "being". The fact that *being* and *knowing* are immediately or inherently connected also establishes intersubjectivity, since *thinking* is possible only in the medium of language. Schleiermacher also describes dialectics as an "art of conversation" ("Kunst des Gedankenwechselns").

The anthropological basis for *knowledge* is the natural and rational human being and her ability to *think* (Lehnerer, 1985, 21). From this anthropological position, Schleiermacher seeks to determine the nature of proper thinking. The main question is: How does one move from the relativity of thinking to the certainty of knowing? Since all thinking (which means every "taken something out of spatial-temporal reality") is relative, a fnal all-encompassing unity of thinking is required for knowledge to take place (Nealeigh, 1988, 180). Therefore, the general and metaphysical goal of Schleiermacher is to describe the presupposition of a transcendent basis for knowing. What, then, distinguishes true knowledge from mere thinking? Schleiermacher provides two criteria. First, *knowing* is thinking, which "is conceived in such a way that it could be produced in the same way by everyone possessing the ability to think". Second, true knowing is thinking, which "is conceived as corresponding to the being that is the object of thought" (ibid. 183). In short, Schleiermacher tries to validate the defnition of knowledge as a *consensus between*  *subjects* as well as in terms of the connection between thinking and being, as a correspondence between thought and its object outside of us. Communication between individuals demands that knowledge is "real"; knowledge is always the result of a communicative process. However, analyzing thinking alone is not enough to explain how one moves from the relativity of thinking to the certainty of knowledge. This is why Schleiermacher gives us a transcendental basis for knowledge. He maintains that this basis between thinking and being can be found in the principle of absolute unity and identifes this absolute unity as God (Nealeigh, 1988, 187).

Dialectics and hermeneutics, as a kind of meta-science consider the preconditions of language, while the existence of language is a condition for the relationship between an individual and society. In what follows, we attempt to provide some insights as to how the questions of language are connected to those of individuality, and therefore again to those of education.

#### *Language, Dialogue, and Subjectivity*

Recalling the distinction made in the frst section of this chapter, a starting point of dialectics is the assumption of a radical *similarity* across all thinkers, but at the same time, there is a radical *difference* in individual thinking. One of the central thoughts of dialectics is the individuality of every single speaker, which can never revert to the "universal" or "general". Every individual is a unique "thinking being" (denkendes Sein) and "being thinking" (seiendes Denken). However, without contrasting positions, it would not be possible to seek uniqueness and identity.

During a discussion, individuals present their own unique ways of being and thinking. Yet, we have to assume that they have a common language that provides the medium for the dispute or dialogue in order to solve a point of contention. Linguistically, an agreement has to be reached both regarding the *contents* of the discussion and the *rules* concerning the dispute.

A fundamental dimension of understanding based on language, is the difference between the grammatical and psychological aspects of language. To describe these in short: grammatical, structural, and a relative constant usage of words make understanding in principle possible. Inside this structure, the individual has to fnd the tools to express herself. The grammatical dimension refers simply to the given logical or *grammatical meaning* (Bedeutung) or contents of the text. In other words," grammatical interpretation aims at the objective understanding of speech", as Parmentier (1989, 191) formulates it.

In the grammatical interpretation, a comparison will be done - the language used in a text will be compared with the sentences used in ordinary language. Every user of the language makes his own individual combination of the language. In this way, every speaker *reconstructs* language permanently. In speaking, one also manifests an "inner" meaning. The subject evokes the meaning (Sinn) of his own "inner world". Exactly what this "given inner meaning" is, is something that cannot be revealed in a hermeneutical process – we cannot delve inside each other's heads. When understanding something grammatically, an individual is, in a way, a "tool of the language", because during the process of interpretation, attention is frst turned to the language and not so much to the person who is speaking.

Besides the grammatical structure of language, Schleiermacher speaks about the psychological dimension of language and psychological understanding. In this dimension, the general objective is secondary, and language, in a certain way, serves the speaker. Whereas grammatical understanding is not interested in the speaker, psychological understanding pays attention to the sense given by the speaker himself. Psychological understanding tries to identify the "real" or intended meaning of the speaker or writer. The interpreter attempts to fnd out the actual idea of the writer's or speaker's utterances. In many cases, this sense is not clear even to the speaker himself. Therefore, asking the author himself only leads to iteration: the interpreter has to understand the explanation, the explanation of the explanation, etc. In addition, the motives are mostly unconscious and the interpreter should actually listen to what has *not* been said or what the speaker is *not* conscious of (Parmentier, 1989, 194). At least this is a point where the interpreter is on slippery ice and is forced to lean on the psychoanalytical theory of unconsciousness.

There are also some problems arising in the feld when thinking about *understanding* and *individuality:* any time one tries to describe with words and concepts the thinking of others, one has crossed the border of individuality. One could even say that understanding revokes the possibility of individuality. On the other hand, it is logically impossible to insist that *understanding* could not exist or would be impossible since, to be an individual, one needs the general. There is just no subjectivity without objectivity, no singularity without the general.

Finally, let us come back to the idea that hermeneutics and pedagogy meet at their very core question – that of individuality.

Understanding plays its most central role in the process of Bildung. In fact, the individual can *understand* herself only in linguistically transmitted reality. Even if the "birth" of subjectivity cannot be narrowed to linguistics as subjectivity already possesses, at a very elementary level, the possibility expressing its own uniqueness. At the most simple level, these forms of expression are like those of a small child, like" the thing over there"," I″ or" no". With the frst example ("the thing over there"), the child implies a distinction between himself and the world. With the words "Me" or "I", he indicates the awareness of being an "Other" in relation to others. With the third example," no", the child shows his will in relation to foreign will (Mollenhauer, 1986, 124).

The special challenge for understanding lies obviously in its asymmetric character. Because the child has to be led through the linguistic conventions, it is not in an equal position to assess either the topic of the discussion or its rules. If this is correct, this does not exclude the possibility of mutual understanding; the rules of discussion will anyway be created by both participants. This means that even if the adult is linguistically more competent, every single situation will be reconstructed into a new special argument, dispute, or discussion – in a very Schleiermacherian sense of the word.

If we take the preconditions of understanding seriously, as they have been described in hermeneutics, it is easy to notice that the reality given for the educator is highly complicated, and any kind of systematical settings of rules or norms are impossible. The tension between the singular and the universal is the starting point of pedagogical practice. But it also remains a never-reachable goal of education when everyone continuously recreates this tension – at least not in the linguistic sense or linguistically.

#### **Conclusion**

Based on previous considerations concerning education as a mediating practice, what can we conclude?

A frst conclusion is that the theory of *non-affrmative education and Bildung cannot revert to the theory of hermeneutics*. General hermeneutics, as described in this chapter, offer us tools for understanding what understanding and interpretation mean, in general. Schleiermacher's hermeneutics, focusing on interpretation and understanding linguistic expressions, refect a distinct take on epistemology. However, Schleiermacher's hermeneutics exceed epistelomogy, e.g., by developing a theory of the self and self-awareness. Such a general theory, or philosophy, of human existence expressed by the dialectics between being, thinking, knowledge, and language contributes to our understanding the process of Bildung. It also highlights the dimensions of pedagogical dialogues.

However, although linguistic transmissions occur within a pedagogical relationship in which both educator and child constantly aim to express their understanding and intentions through language, and despite they interpret each other for fnding out about others and themselves, hermeneutic theory of communication, interpretation, and understanding mediated by language is not a theory of education.

The second conclusion from this analysis would be that the *non-affrmative theory of education and Bildung cannot be thought beyond or as something distinct from hermeneutics.* Teaching in schools and other pedagogical institutions is based on curricula. In many countries, these curricula express quite detailed educational standards and other measurable goals. In this connection, hermeneutics operates as a reminder that education and Bildung are, ultimately, not processes that can be determined beforehand. Pedagogical processes operating through language ultimately originate in the participants interaction, which, due to its hermeneutic nature, is dependent on both parties. Regarding external expectations and curriculum, pedagogical work, as hermeneutics reminds us, cannot be expected to affrm these external interests. In fact, despite policies that would limit teachers' pedagogical degrees of freedom, the unique character of the pedagogical interaction escapes this external determination.

The third conclusion would be that *in hermeneutics there often exists an implicit a theory of pedagogical intervention.* From the perspective of non-affrmative education, hermeneutic reasoning does *not* mean that schools as an institution should refrain from or avoid providing a perspective of reality. On contrary. Pedagogical institutions have to offer some perspectives on the world. In addition to learn about the world, teaching opens up the possibility of arguing from different starting points and understanding different worldviews. Such a hermeneutically contrasting pedagogy offers the learner the possibility to develop their own horizon, which means understanding their own position in relation to others.

To conclude, with the help of non-affrmative hermeneutic pedagogy, the individual is offered a critical distance from oneself in order to exceed or change their own position or correct their own practises." To exceed" oneself or to redirect one's thinking or emotions, is not trivial at all. Rather, these processes belong to the core of Bildung as they mark the process of identity. Exactly here lies the point, which can be described as *multilayered identity*: as the individual refects on herself, thereby grasping the duplicity between" me" and" I″, the individual is, in principle and to a certain level, able to steer oneself and the own process of Bildung or the development of identity. This conclusion clearly echoes the notion of maturity, or *Mündigkeit* in the German Bildung stradition. On his question of what enlightenment is, Kant answers that it is "man's exit from his self-inficted immaturity". Then, to "have the courage to use one's own reason" means precisely to judge independently, even against authorities and given traditions and ways of thinking (Dörpinghaus et al., 2006, 63).

Such use of reason is both subjective and public, and refects what in the frst section of this chapter was referred to as an identity able to act self-formingly without losing oneself and a refexive intersubjectivity as public discourse, living with continuously answering the open question of who we are, open for cultural change without dismissing history. In a non-teleological view of history and the future, Bildung presents itself as an unending task, a kind of perfection without the idea of perfectibility. Non-affrmative education, which aims to prepare for participation, is such a discourse.

#### **References**

Dörpinghaus, A., Poenitsch, A., & Wigger, L. (2006). *Einführung in die Theorie der Bildung*. WBG.

Fichte, J. G. (2000). *Foundations of natural right, according to the principles of the Wissenschaftslehre*. Cambridge University Press.

Fischer, H. (2001). *Friedrich Schleiermacher*. Beck.

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## **Part IV Non-affrmative Education and Empirical Research**

## **Chapter 10 Pedagogical Experimentalism and the Principle of Verifcation. A Quest for Non-affrmative Educational Research**

#### **Hanno Su and Johannes Bellmann**

**Abstract** Starting from the ongoing debate over whether education should take a non-affrmative stance towards reality, we pose the question of whether adopting a non-affrmative theory of education necessarily calls for a non-affrmative concept of educational research. We argue that dominant paradigms of both qualitative and quantitative research on education, respectively, assume a specifc affrmative stance, which not only leads them to ignore the productive freedom of the practice of education that they investigate but also reproduces a dichotomy between education and research instead of inscribing themselves in the project of verifcation of the principles that are at stake in education. We do so by revisiting, frst, Benner's early outline of Pedagogy as a practically experimenting science as an alternative to dominant research paradigms, second, Mollenhauer's critical pedagogy and its attempt to conceptualize non-affrmative educational research, and, third, Rancière's interventional empiricism with a particular focus on the concept of practical "verifcation." In this vein, we aim to contribute to the contemporary concept of nonaffrmative educational research, which allows for a more precise understanding of the ways in which such an approach is at the same time affrmative with respect to the principles which are "verifed" in the practice of education.

**Keywords** Educational research · Experiment · Emancipation · Research community · Pedagogy

#### **Introduction**

Throughout his work, Dietrich Benner has focused on a theory of non-affrmative education. Education is called affrmative when it functions either as an instrument of mere reproduction of a given society or as an instrument of the production of a

H. Su (\*) · J. Bellmann

Institute of Education, University of Münster, Münster, Germany e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS><EMAIL_ADDRESS>
utopian future society. In both cases, "the goals and tasks of education are determined according to given positive purposes, which are supposed to serve as normative guidelines for education." One starts from a real-existing, the other from a vicariously anticipated positivity. "Both positions rely on the instrumental concept of educational practice and see in it an important means of handing down or changing given positivities" (Benner, 2010, p. 142; transl. H.S./J.B.). While these two versions of affrmative education affrm the addressees of education with respect to an identity they are supposed to develop, there is yet another version of affrmative education that simply affrms the addressees as they already are. Thus, not only the broad instrumentalist normative education with reference to given or anticipated objectives but also the anti-pedagogical abandonment of educational addressing altogether can be regarded as affrmative: "If we affrm the child in need of education by denying the requirement to learn, we submit to its whims; if, on the other hand, we affrm the requirements to be put on it by judging it as not yet satisfying them, we subject it to our ideas of a normatively correct education." (Benner, 1982, p. 954; transl. H.S./J.B.).

In the concept of non-affrmative education, however, "young people were not educated to affrm existing conditions or to affrm pedagogical actors as representatives of anticipated conditions. Instead, they must be enabled to participate in discourses on what is to be preserved and what is to be changed. Education that introduces such discourses can only be "non-affrmative." Its aim is not to anticipate the results of the processes of Bildung. Instead, its aim is to introduce young people to an ongoing dispute that is to be settled, not only among the adults themselves but also between the generations" (Benner, 2022, p. 5). Thus, non-affrmative education means abandoning putting education in service of extra-pedagogical determinations (Benner, 2010, p. 142). For Benner, this does not mean a ban on affrmation in the practice of education; it rather intends to point out that in a *theory* of education, an affrmation of affrmations or negations is "methodically" inappropriate to orient pedagogical impacts on learning processes (see footnote 25, pp. 142–43).

In our discussion, we will raise questions concerning this argument. While acknowledging Benner's rejection of instrumental concepts of education, we argue that he is less straightforward about how non-affrmative educational practice and research also need to leave room for "affrmation." His critique of education in the service of *extra*-pedagogical determinations can be understood as if putting education in the service of *intra*-pedagogical determinations would be uncontroversial or even indispensable, i.e. if we understand free self-activity as an inner-pedagogical principle, it's "affrmation" in terms of a "summons to free self-activity" does, indeed, not contradict a non-affrmative education properly understood. In fact, Benner's concept of a "pedagogical transformation of external societal interests into legitimate pedagogical action" (Benner, 2022, p. 18) indicates that any extrapedagogical determination has to be transformed into a legitimate intra-pedagogical determination. But Benner does not elaborate on this point in terms of a legitimate

form of affrmation.1 The statement in the footnote cited above seems to use a different distinction, arguing that affrmation can be admitted in the practice of education but must be regarded as inappropriate for a theory of education that intends to orient practice. For us, this argument seems to be contradictory, since if educational theory lacks a legitimate place for affrmation, it cannot claim to orient educational practice, which simply cannot do without affrmations. Hence, the legitimate place for affrmation seems to be a blind spot in non-affrmative educational practice, theory, and research. The main thesis of this paper is that the practical verifcation of an indeterminate equal Bildsamkeit and free self-activity can be regarded as a legitimate and indispensable form of affrmation in a non-affrmative educational practice, as well as in educational theory and research.

In the following, we want to develop this argument by focusing on the question of what a non-affrmative theory of education means for our understanding of *educational research*. Is a non-affrmative theory of education necessarily calling for a non-affrmative concept of educational research, and what would such a concept look like? Although for Benner, a theory of non-affrmative education has always been center stage, he also refected on and tried to develop approaches to educational *research* that he regarded as non-affrmative—from the early paper "Pädagogisches Experiment" (1972/1994) to his own more recent projects of empirical research in education as sketched in the introduction to this volume. Refecting on his own projects, Benner declares: "One of the non-affrmative aspects of the research concepts outlined above is that, in all three variants, they neither colonize action theory structures rooted in the intrinsic logic of pedagogical practice nor immunize research against criticism with reference to paradigm-specifc norms and self-evident features […]. Rather, they seek to bring action theory and paradigmatically proven research into an exchange that avoids uniform conceptions of theory and empiricism and focuses on the further development of educational practice and the optimization of education science research" (Benner, 2022, pp. 32–33).

Throughout his work, we fnd a pervasive optimism that a productive exchange of action theory and paradigmatically proven research is possible. His "General Pedagogy" ends with a short chapter on "the basic structure of educational research." Here, Benner sketches competing research paradigms in education, namely empirical-analytic, historical-hermeneutic, and ideology-critical approaches, and their different understandings of critique. In fourth place Benner mentions an action-theoretical approach as developed in his work, which is not characterized as a *research* paradigm next to the ones mentioned before but as an "action-theoretical discourse" (Benner, 2010, p. 324, transl. H.S./J.B.), which entails a theory of

1The recent debate on a "post-critical pedagogy" has pointed out that approaches of critical pedagogy failed to see any legitimacy for an "affrmative attitude" claiming "that there are principles to defend" (Hodgson et al., 2017, p. 15). From our view, this pledge for a "principled normativity" seems to be a promising approach if it is further elaborated with reference to genuine pedagogical principles. In the "Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy," however, it is our impression that the authors do not focus the affrmation of certain principles but the task is rather described as "to affrm that there is good in the world that is worth preserving" (ibid., p. 19).

Erziehung, a theory of Bildung and a theory of educational institutions. While arguing within this action-theoretical discourse, "General Pedagogy" nevertheless hopes to be connectable to different paradigms of educational research. This, however, depends, as Benner (2010, p. 325) declares, on whether these paradigms themselves leave room for the action-theoretical questions as developed in his seminal work.

To be sure, we do not want to deny the very possibility of productive interrelations between a non-affrmative theory of education and different paradigms of educational research. Nevertheless, we want to argue that dominant paradigms of research on education, both quantitative and qualitative, do not leave room for action-theoretical questions of non-affrmative education. As they lack a developed theory of their subject matter, i.e., education as a specifc non-affrmative practice, they also lack the prerequisite to holding instrumentalist demands at bay.2 Moreover, we hold that dominant research paradigms in education are themselves affrmative since research is either used as a mere representation of the feld of education as it is or as an instrument of its reform in the name of predetermined objectives. Both forms of affrmative research on education do not only ignore the productive freedom of the practice they investigate; they also reproduce a dichotomy between education and research instead of inscribing themselves in the project of verifcation of the principles that are at stake in education.

First, we try to make plausible why dominant research paradigms on education can be regarded as affrmative. Second, we revisit Benner's early outline of Pedagogy as a practically experimenting science as an alternative to dominant research paradigms. For discussing in what way this approach can still be adequately grasped by the distinction of affrmative/non-affrmative, we, thirdly, draw attention to Mollenhauer's critical pedagogy and its attempt to conceptualize non-affrmative educational research. As the most radical alternative to dominant research paradigms, we fnally discuss Jacques Rancière's interventional empiricism with a particular focus on the concept of practical "verifcation". Summing up, we argue that by drawing on Rancière, we can not only develop a contemporary concept of nonaffrmative educational research; we can also be more precise in what way such an approach is at the same time affrmative with respect to the principles which are "verifed" in the practice of education.

#### **Mainstream Research on Education**

Following John Elliott (2006), we start with the distinction between *research on education* and *educational research*. What nowadays is acknowledged as "research" in the feld of education—both quantitative and qualitative—can be characterized as research on education. *Research on education* "aspires to produce 'objective

2Uljens and Ylimaki (2017, p. 15) made a similar observation regarding research on "educational leadership," which, oddly enough, to a large extent lacks an elaborated theory of *education* as the "object" of any educational leadership.

knowledge' about practice in classrooms and schools by adopting the position of an impartial spectator who transcends the evaluative perspectives of education practitioners. Such a position is presumed to be a condition for describing and explaining what is *really* going on in institutions of education" (p. 170; emp. original). In contrast to this, *educational research* is characterized by its "practical intention to realize educational values in action. It addresses practical questions and, in doing so, cannot avoid taking an evaluative stance on the aims of education. In this view, it is a form of inquiry aimed at the formation of practical insights and judgments. Since these are rooted in the everyday experiences of education practitioners, educational research constitutes a form of commonsense inquiry rather than a science" (pp. 169–70). A similar way to draw this distinction is to connect research on education with an objective approach and educational research with an interested approach (Biesta, 2020, pp. 93–94). Still another way to describe both approaches is Eugen Fink's (1978, p. 33) distinction between ascertaining science and design science (feststellende und entwerfende Wissenschaft), which helps to see that—irrespective of their paradigmatic opposition—both empirical-analytical and historicalhermeneutic approaches can be regarded as versions of ascertaining science.

Before we discuss the prospects of educational research that Elliott, like Benner, depicts as a "practical science" (Elliott, 2006, p. 173), we turn to mainstream research on education. The purpose here is not to provide an overview of the vast variety of research on education with regard to its methodological paradigms and disciplinary backgrounds. Rather, we try to point out some common traits of mainstream research on education by using Benner's distinction between affrmative and non-affrmative education and transferring it—by analogy—to research. We are aware that, in a certain sense, this analogy is bold, since of course there are essential differences between the practice of education and the practice of research. Nevertheless, it seems ftting since in both cases you can take the central term of (non-)affrmative as characterizing certain *positionings* (Davies & Harré, 1990) be it of educators towards students or of researchers towards "the feld." We would like to argue that in this regard, mainstream research on education—both empiricalanalytical and hermeneutical-reconstructive—is predominantly characterized by affrmative positionings towards the feld.

In *empirical-analytical approaches*, we fnd the widespread understanding that research on education has to provide the relevant knowledge base for reforms in education, i.e., the description of the initial state before the reform, the recommendation of aims and measures, and the evaluation of effects (Prenzel & Heiland, 1985, p. 49). This technological understanding of research on education (Bildungsforschung) was articulated well before the upswing of evidence-based education. Interestingly, it is grounded on an alleged analogy between education and research on education: both are supposedly dealing with the transformation of an initial state into a target state (ibid., p. 50). Not only education itself but also education reform is understood as a rational action. In both cases, one has to obtain the relevant knowledge *before* realizing a measure.

In this technological approach, research on education claims to provide the necessary evidence base for rational action both in education and in education reform. This positioning of research on education vis-à-vis educational practice already contains a devaluation of practitioners' practical knowledge, which is considered to be not yet scientifcally enlightened knowledge about education. Occasionally, research on education even considers this knowledge as mere "ersatz knowledge" (van Ackeren et al., 2013, p. 56; transl. H.S./J.B.), which is based on "intuition" and "personal preferences" (ibid.) rather than evidence. The ideal to strive for, then, is for school leaders, teachers, and other professional educators to have a strong orientation towards scientifc "evidence" combined with a low orientation towards "ersatz knowledge" (ibid., p. 57). The devaluation of practitioners' practical knowledge as "ersatz knowledge" is also justifed by its alleged conservative character, while the reference to scientifc knowledge is generally associated with the critical questioning of the respective practices (cf. Kuper & Muslic, 2012).

In any case, there is the widespread assumption that scientifc knowledge, which is considered authoritative, is not and cannot be generated by the educational practice itself. In this view, it is therefore (tacitly) accepted that educational practice remains permanently dependent on the knowledge production of research. The positioning of research on education in relation to educational practice thus takes on paternalistic features. Because of its assumed superior perspective, it claims to be the decisive authority in the discourse on educational quality and quality development. If it encounters indifference or even resistance in educational practice, it can take this as further evidence of its prior conviction that educational practice is in desperate need of scientifc expert knowledge.

Research on education in this understanding decidedly intends to "get practical" (Prenzel & Heiland, 1985, p. 50; transl. H.S./J.B.) by changing the educational world for the better. Therefore, research on education typically starts with a critique of educational practice in its present state of affairs by detecting certain shortcomings and comparing these shortcomings with the performances of other individuals, organizations, or systems. In the ideal case, this mode of research develops causal theories about differences in performance. Research, then, is considered verifed if, on the basis of causal theories, effective interventions can be demonstrated. But even if causal mechanisms cannot be secured, evaluations can take effect just by comparison and feedback (Bellmann, 2016). In any case, the scientifc evaluation is made within a framework of given standards that are known before rational action is taken. Thus, it represents a form of *external critique* (Jaeggi, 2014, pp. 261–62).

Although this understanding of research on education is critical, it is at the same time affrmative when judged by a non-affrmative theory of educational research. Transforming an initial state into a target state known in advance is affrmative, both in the case of education and research. It passes over the self-activity and productive freedom of practitioners and turns them into mere executive bodies for external directives. Thus, research in education entails a positioning towards the feld, which at the same time devaluates practical knowledge and authorizes scientifc knowledge. It is not only affrmative but also paternalistic because it claims to have superior knowledge of the feld and the means to produce this superior knowledge. In this way, it establishes a relationship between research on education and "the feld," in which the latter is locked in a permanent dependency.

*Hermeneutic-reconstructive approaches* to research on education differ signifcantly from empirical-analytical approaches since they usually refrain from any claims for improving education practice through research. Rather, they aim to describe or reconstruct certain features of pedagogical practice or the implicit orientations of practitioners. These approaches usually seek to represent the educational world, but they do not have the intention to change it. Such research might claim to explicate the implicit knowledge of practitioners, yet it nevertheless leaves everything as it is. It simply tries to *reconstruct* how practitioners interactively construct the educational world they inhabit. In this sense, hermeneutic-reconstructive research on education is also regarded as a second-order construction (Bohnsack, 2014, p. 25).

At frst sight, this positioning toward the feld seems to be more modest than that of empirical-analytical approaches. Researchers do not claim to have better knowledge or a "higher rationality" (Przyborski & Wohlrab-Sahr, 2021, p. 355) than those investigated. But, nevertheless, the researchers' distinct ability to explicate establishes a particular power relation in interpretative research (Hametner, 2013, p. 142). The assumption is that those investigated do have the relevant knowledge that keeps the educational world going, but they only have it implicitly. Basically, this implies that they do not know what they know (Przyborski & Wohlrab-Sahr, 2021, p. 355). In this view, implicit knowledge drives educational practice without practitioners being aware of it. In contrast to empirical-analytical approaches, hermeneuticreconstructive approaches do not claim any epistemic dependency on the feld. Nevertheless, the power of interpretation establishes a split between those who interpret and who interpret. Here, researchers do not intend to let practitioners participate in the interpretation of research material. It is even recommended, not to communicate results to those in the feld because confronting them with a different perspective on their practice might cause confusion among them (ibid., p. 102).

Thus, hermeneutic-reconstructive approaches deal with a "Hinterwelt of meaning" (Brinkmann, 2015, p. 533; transl. H.S./J.B.; "eine Hinterwelt des Sinns"), a deep structure of meaning that generates practice but which, at the same time, remains hidden to those who practice. John Elliott also points out this constitutive split between the explicators and the explicated: "Although many qualitative researchers focused on situations and events from the standpoint of their meaning for those involved, they employed second-order theoretical constructs to explain these meanings. Their research fndings tended to suggest that things were not as they appeared to participants because they were unaware of the social, economic, and political factors that inevitably condition their commonsense constructions of meaning. With varying degrees of explicitness, a great deal of qualitative research in the feld claims to have penetrated to a level of reality that is hidden from the view of participants" (Elliott, 2006, p. 177).

Hermeneutic-reconstructive approaches are *affrmative* in a different sense than empirical-analytical approaches. Whereas the latter, as we have seen, are affrmative in forming target outcomes of education, the former is affrmative in the sense that they refrain from "getting practical" in the feld and leave everything as it is. Although both approaches differ in terms of their claim to improvement, they share a certain picture of research "as an activity aimed at discovering essential truths about a reality that lies beyond how the world appears to those engaged in the practical pursuits of everyday life" (Elliott, 2006, p. 178). Both are research on education that shares an "objectivist view of the 'objects' of research" (Kemmis, 2012, p. 891), be it things independent of the mind (like causal mechanisms) or things of the mind (like frst order constructions). Against this backdrop of mainstream research on education, we will now turn to the question of how non-affrmative educational research might look like.

#### **Pedagogical Experimentalism**

Benners's early paper, "Pedagogical Experiment" (1972/1994) represents an important contribution in the direction of non-affrmative educational research. The contemporary context of Benner's paper is the widely discussed dualism between historical-hermeneutic and empirical-analytic approaches and the emergence of an emancipatory pedagogy as a possible resolution of this dualism (Benner, 1973/2001, pp. 273–74). Although Benner acknowledges that contemporary approaches to emancipatory pedagogy rightly regard education science as a *practical science* (ibid., p. 274), he articulates several reservations towards emancipatory pedagogy. Among them was its inability to successfully establish education science as a practical research discipline, which—for Benner—results from adhering to a technical understanding of experiments and a hermeneutical concept of communication (ibid., p. 317).3 In his book "Hauptströmungen der Erziehungswissenschaft" [Main Directions of Education Science], Benner presents his own approach as a solution to those problems which emancipatory pedagogy has left unsolved. The methodological heart of this solution is the outline of a specifc pedagogical experimentalism in the fnal chapter of this book, which draws on central parts of the paper from 1972.

Similar to *action research*—but obviously without any explicit references to it— Benner sketches a genuine mode of "pedagogical empiricism" within a broader picture of educational research (ibid., 114). Such a pedagogical empiricism is not presented as replacing the hermeneutic or analytic approaches of mainstream research on education. Rather, it is an essential supplement and hinge point without which the results of hermeneutic and analytic approaches remain unconnected to pedagogical experience. For Benner, "one of the most urgent tasks of the present" (p. 110) is to conceptualize "practical-empirical educational research" (p. 101; eine "praktisch-erfahrungswissenschaftliche Erziehungsforschung") as distinct from, but related to, hermeneutic and analytic approaches. The heart of such a "practical

3Within emancipatory pedagogy, Benner credits Mollenhauer with having developed the most nuanced understanding of social-practical experiments (1973/2001, p. 311). We will come back to this point in Chap. 3.

science" (ibid.) is the development of specifc "research methods for a practical empiricism" (p. 110), namely a distinct pedagogical experimentalism.

Benner is well aware of the different traditions of experimentalism in the history of education. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, we fnd the idea of technical-experimental research on education among founders of educational psychology such as Meumann and Lay. In his own defense of experimentalism, however, Benner draws on a different tradition of pedagogical experimentalism, in which the idea of pedagogy as an experimental practical science was developed in close relation to practical reforms in education. For Kant, for instance, the Philanthropinum Dessau was a concrete contemporary example of generic pedagogical experimentalism (pp. 83–84). In the same way, Peter Petersen developed his idea of a pedagogical 'Tatsachenforschung' in close relation to the *Jenaplanschule*, as a reform experiment (p. 89). Benner considers Petersen's approach as groundbreaking for a "truly pedagogical empiricism" (p. 106; transl. H.S./J.B.).4

When Benner took up the idea of pedagogical experiments in 1972, it was risky since pedagogy, once a practical science, was about to turn into a technical discipline (p. 79). Against this background, a frst and decisive step in Benner's line of argument was the distinction between a *technical* and a *practical* experiment for which he draws on his academic teacher, Erich Heintel. A technical experiment seeks to gain causal knowledge about some subject matter or problem that can be turned into potential technical applications of this knowledge. The meaning of these applications, however, is located outside of the experiment. A practical experiment, on the contrary, is situated within the horizon of motivated conjoined action, which transcends the horizon of technical applications in two ways: On the one hand, in a practical experiment, those involved in the experiment deliberate about the meaning of technical applications. On the other hand, the subject matter or problem is investigated, even when or where it is not available in a technical way (p. 81). Any particular practical experiment again is *partial* and located within the *total experiment* of the human transformation of self and world (p. 83). The latter point is crucial because it demonstrates that reforming the school is neither possible nor desirable without reforming society (p. 107). To put it in Dewey's terms, Experimentalism encompasses education *and* democracy. In Benner's words, [s]eparating experiments in education as partial experiments from a "total experiment" in society will likely serve to disguise societal contradictions rather than to solve them (ibid.).

Benner uses both distinctions (technical/practical; partial/total) for sharp criticism of the contemporary understanding of pedagogical experiments. With reference to the distinction between a technical and a practical experiment, Benner observes that "[w]here experimentation is [actually] going on, be it in politics or education, it is technical experiments that prevail; in each case, the aim of experimentation is presupposed without question" (p. 86; transl. H.S./J.B.). With

4Benner has studied Petersen in great detail, while references to John Dewey are absent from his early works. As we know, however, that Petersen studied Dewey's work (Retter, 2009, p. 164), Benner's remarkable early paper, "Pedagogical Experiment," might show some indirect infuence of pragmatic experimentalism.

reference to the distinction between partial and total experiments, Benner's diagnosis is that, in the case of partial experiments, all attention is absorbed by the question of under what conditions the experiments can be optimized, while the growing questionability of the broader horizon within which these experiments take place is surpassed by repairs that stabilize the system (p. 86).

On this basis, Benner fnally develops a structural model for educational research in which educational theory, practical experiments, and practical empirical research are coordinated. The structural model is depicted in a fgure that can be read as a cyclical problematization of practice (p. 114). At frst glance, this looks similar to empirical-analytical approaches and their external critiques of practice. In Benner's structural model, however, the relation of theory both to practice and to empirical research is not understood in terms of verifcation or falsifcation (p. 108). First, practice is oriented but not regimented by theory (p. 109). Hereby, Benner points out a "pedagogical difference" (p. 109, transl. H.S./J.B.) between theory and practice that entails both relationship and differentiation. Theory can guide practice but practice cannot be deduced from theory. It is the unalienable task of practitioners who bear responsibility in concrete situations to mediate between theoretical orientations for meaningful action, on the one hand, and the practical realization of plans for action that are critically oriented in this way, on the other hand (Benner, 1973/2001, p. 330). Due to the pedagogical difference, pedagogical experiments always have the character of a risk ("Wagnischarakter"; ibid.). And trying to overcome this risk by establishing a linear relationship between theory and practice (or empirical research and practice, for that matter) would be equal to negating the very possibility of practical experiments in education. Educational theory, for Benner, is a theory of an experimenting practice (ibid.) while making a distinction between *pedagogical* and *educational* experiments. Pedagogical experiments are directed to the transformation of the institutional framework, which is conducive to educational experiments (ibid., p. 331).

Second, Benner understands the relation of theory to empirical research neither in terms of verifcation or falsifcation. Rather, theory needs practical empirical research to get in contact with the way in which theory becomes practically relevant by the mediation of practice. At the same time, the theoretically oriented experimental practice needs empirical research to get in contact with its own consequences. Although Benner has reservations against the cybernetic idea of a feedback loop (ibid., p. 326), a functional equivalent is center stage in his own structural model for educational research. It is the pragmatist idea of enabling a refective experience ("Rückerfahrung," ibid., p. 330) by getting in contact with the consequences of one's own practice. Practical empirical research, as Benner envisions it, functions as a means of making a refective experience possible—both in theory and practice. It allows theory to refect on its own practical relevance in its mediation by the feld, and it allows the practice to problematize its own understanding (Benner, 1972/1994, p. 109).

In contrast to mainstream versions of research on education, Benner's concept of educational research is *non-affrmative* in two ways. First, it does not establish an instrumental relation between research and practice as it is pervasive in

empirical-analytical approaches. Rather, it is the pedagogical difference (between theory and practice and between research and practice) that provides room for an experimental practice whose pedagogical relevance can only be determined by those involved in these experiments. Theory and research are both important factors within this process of sense-making, yet they are not able to determine it. Second, educational research is non-affrmative since it is far from leaving everything as it is. Rather, it intervenes in educational reality in order to make it conducive for educational experiments. This interventionism, however, is indirect since it seeks to transform the institutional framework for education as an experimental practice in its own right.

We want to ask two critical questions here. The frst one concerns indirect interventionism. Cautious as it might be, it establishes a hierarchy between those who experiment with the context and those who experiment within. While it must be admitted that there is some division of labor between education, educational policy, and research, more radical conceptions of action research would claim that these and other different practices build an interconnected "practice architecture" (Kemmis, 2012, p. 886) so that pedagogical experiments presuppose some joint attention and shared responsibility for consequences within these architectures. This political understanding of pedagogical experiments is not only appropriate for democratic societies but also for a democratic education that has a "double purpose": "the formation and transformation of selves and societies" (ibid., p. 894).

The second critical question refers to the structural model for educational research that suggests that the process of "problematization of practice" is in some way theory-driven. In any case, an educational theory is considered the starting point of this process, both from theory to practice and from theory to empiricism (Benner, 1972/1994, p. 114). In contrast to this, a pragmatist position would argue that the starting point for any problematization of practice would be the practice itself. Although Benner's structural model emphasizes the relationship of theory, research and practice, there seems to be a bias for the theoretical point of view and a surpassing of the practitioners' perspectives (Sesink, 2015, p. 32).

It is interesting to note that Benner not only developed a structural model for educational research with the pedagogical experiment as its crucial element but that, some years later, he (together with Jörg Ramsegger) also was involved in a pedagogical experiment of/in a primary school that was accompanied by a research project from the University of Münster. In the fnal report about this reform experiment, we can notice a more radical view on pedagogical experimentalism that also addresses the critical questions mentioned above. Here, researchers and practitioners were seen as a community of experimenters, which refect together on the consequences of their experimental practice. "Already the choice of the objects of observation makes it clear that the accompanying research in the primary school project is oriented towards a concept of experience which is under the primacy of practice. The practical staff members are not executing organs of theoretical designs, and the scientifc staff members do not primarily seek knowledge for the sake of theory. Rather, all staff members contribute their respective qualifcations to the joint attempt to combine the development of an action-oriented concept with research into pedagogical practice in the sense of a permanent correction of the concept by practice and of practice by the concept" (Benner & Ramsegger, 1981, p. 185; transl. H.S./J.B.).

This remarkable example of (participatory) action research is non-affrmative in a still different sense: It not only refutes both instrumental relationships between research and practice and a detached spectator perspective of research on practice that leaves everything as it is; moreover, it disrupts a widespread hierarchy between researchers and practitioners and verifes an unconventional *equality* between them. Both sides are seen as "equal partners" (ibid., 185) in the attempt to improve education and to interpret what improvement in education means. In the following, we will discuss whether this positioning of educational research can still adequately be grasped by the distinction affrmative/non-affrmative or whether we rather have to acknowledge that a non-affrmative positioning towards 'the feld' at the same entails some kind of affrmation in terms of verifcation.

#### **Critical Pedagogy and the Researching Community**