The connection is sloppy use of language. John Dewey and Martin Heidegger used the same or similar terms and ideas but with different definitions. Researchers in Education, primarily people like Nell Nodding, have used Dewey’s terms with the early Heidegger’s definition. It should be noted that later in life, Heidegger repudiated his own position and replaced it with a more mystic or spiritualist concept akin to listening to your inner voice. So when I write about the influence of Heidegger I am doing doing so based upon the concepts in his early work, Being and Time.
This is problematic because Dewey was many things but he wasn’t a subjectivist. John Dewey believed that if you let children learn in a “naturalistic setting” that they would find an absolute truth. For Dewey, 2+2 always equaled 4. It didn’t matter how you reached 4, it was the answer was the important thing. (His idea of truth being an New England -upper middle class-white-lapsed Protestant-World view) At no point did Dewey claim that truth is a narrative, or a construct. This, as far as it goes is not a bad concept and there is some value in using it to help children see how what they learn applies to real world settings.
Heidegger, on the other hand, was a near complete subjectivist who thought that absolutes were a linguistic creation. In his work, Being and Time, Heidegger writes about the concept of “A thing in the world” or an object that becomes what it is through the process of definition or naming of that thing. This is a useful concept in some ways and can be explained as an extension of Plato’s theory of forms. We call those “Chairs” Chairs because they all have the qualities of “chairness” even though they might have have as many differences as similarities. But, when we, through a process of examination and discovery name something a “chair” in a known language, it is absolutely a chair, not a sofa, nor a stool, not a bench. But, for Heidegger, there was no form or absolute chair, only attributes that we attribute to a thing. Thus, in early Heidegggerian thinking, all truth is a process and truth merely a label.
For Heidegger discovering truth was a process, and it was the process, not the outcome that was important. Thus, 2+2=4 is not as important as how you arrive at 4. The answer is less important than the process. The end result can be anything we choose to name it.
In this way, US educational philosophy has been subverted by Post Modernism from a loosely Christian world view espoused by Dewey, Mann and Montessori into a system lacking absolute value or meaning. The focus has changed, without educators realizing it, from child centered, to process centered. Only the process is important there is little or no value in the end result.
This is why I state from time to time that the public education system is child abuse. It is a system that, at its core, espouses meaninglessness as truth. Which, is another way of saying, there is no truth. If there is no truth, there is possibility of education. If there is no possibility of education there is no purpose in school.
Or at least that is my contention.
I don’t know much about Dewy, but I agree with you that Heidegger was a subjectivitist. I think he start out with Husserl and phenomenology. Phenomenology could be an easy stepping stone to subjectivism and relativism. I know many of the post moderns think highly of him and they are not believers in Truth. But here’s the insane irony: they say it’s true that there is no truth — which is contradictory and hypocritical. However, that doesn’t seem to stop them. I read that some post moderns appeal to Heidegger’s insight that contradiction lies at the deepest levels of Being. And maybe that’s true at the quantum level where phenomena defy common sense, e.g., you can have the same particle occupy two different spaces simultaneously. But I don’t think Heidegger got that insight about contradiction from science or philosophy... maybe through poetry vaulting over everything, but who knows?
I know Heidegger wanted to purify the language of philosophy but I don’t know exactly how. I also know the positivists where suggesting something similar. With the positivists there was a push to make language scientifically accountable. But I think Heidegger was more concerned about Being, its categories and how people got the central idea wrong since Plato. I guess that also goes into the topic of ontics and ontology which you brought up.
I think relativism is thoroughly entrenched in almost every aspect of western life. Again, the irony is that the US went to the moon based on the idea of truth — that we can know the truth about the physical world. But western culture is a different story and for many people it seems harsh to say the West knows the truth — which means that other cultures don’t know the truth. It goes against the left’s idea equality and compassion. The left claim Capitalism is a repressive evil that victimizes minorities and silences their voices with its grand narrative. These minorities also have their cultural truths. But would people who espouse this line prefer to go to a doctor in the West than a witch doctor from Africa? They say that truth is cultural and relative. If truth was so relative why would they go to a western doctor? Why not go to a witch doctor from Africa? So they are hypocrites once again.
Though Heidegger was also a terrible human being (unrepentant Nazi, had affairs with his students while married, had an affair with Hannah Arendt, etc.) I like his idea that “Language is the House of Being.” I don’t know if he came up with it himself or took it from another source — for example, I think took “Being toward Death” from St Augustine. This works well with my idea that God has come to rest in language.
If I can briefly explain my idea that God is now language. We are born and die within language. It surrounds and shapes our existence. In the Pre-modern period God existed as a separate entity. He was Logos or the Word – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Aristotle said that God was “Thought thinking thought.” With Christ the Word poured himself into flesh. And then years later that idea of God is eclipsed by secular modernity with Nietzsche’s idea that “God is Dead.” In the Romantic Era, man now becomes God by way of his creativity and his Will to Power. Think of all the creative geniuses that were worshiped in the Romantic Era — the artists were high priests of the spirit. The artists still believed in a spirit, despite the rise of a godless science. And now we have Post Modernism and the emphasis on language — the idea that language determines man’s fate. Language maybe working without our consciously knowing — think of Richard Dawkin’s selfish genes or Hegel’s The Absolute working through man. Laurie Anderson said language is a virus. However, it surrounds and defines our being and our ideas about our world. I think Heidegger might have said that without language there would be no world, there would be nothing...
So I’m curious about this topic because it starts with God as “The Word” and ends up with a godless Heidegger saying that without language there would be nothing. The ancient “Word” ends up as Language in postmodernism – some kind of crazy full circle. If you have any insight, with respect to Heidegger or otherwise, on this topic please let me know.
I have a hard time with Heidegger and have read that he purposely wrote to make reading very difficult. It is almost impenetrable writing and even commentators seem to disagree with each other. It all seems intentional and I just pity the people ensnared in his words. It’s like a fly trap and you are groping around to find meaning – there maybe more sleight-at-hand than present-at- hand with him. But he is a big influence on postmodernism. Still, I think there are trans-historical and trans-cultural truths. As well, not all cultures are equal in having the truth – some have it more of it than others. In other words, there is a big difference between putting a bone in your nose and going to the moon.
A lot of my understanding of post modernism has come from Stephen Hicks’
“Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault.” It’s a great and informative read if you are interested.