Malte Brinkmann – The Event of the World

Описание: Prof. Dr. Malte Brinkmann (Berlin, GER)
The Event of the World - Phenomenological Reflections on a Worldly Theory of Bildung and Education

Welcome Speech on October 8th, 2025 as part of the 7th International Symposium on Phenomenological Research in Education: World, Worldliness and Relation to the World

Prof. Brinkmann's homepage: https://hu.berlin/aew_eng
Blog: http://paed.ophen.org/?lang=en
Symposion on Phenomenological Research in Education: https://hu.berlin/sym_phen_ed

Abstract:
About world and worldliness can only be spoken and thought within the world. Phenomenology makes this circle, which articulates itself in a special relationship to the world, the starting point for a wide range of considerations by attempting to enter it in the right way (Heidegger). Phenomenological reflections on the world as a lifeworld and arche (Husserl), as existential (Heidegger) and as that which ‘gives space’ and ‘allows time’ (Fink) see the world as more than just the sum of all things, objects or subjective horizons, more than just a container. Phenomenology thus opposes the powerful metaphysical tradition in which the world is regarded as the totality of objects and the corresponding reduction of being to objects as that which can be thought and determined as real and exact and then technically, economically and medially managed, optimised and exploited. The world is divided and distributed and is then to be shared in Bildung and education. This is where the modern concept of education has its systematic origins. According to the theory of Bildung (education) following W. v. Humboldt, Bildung is supposed to enable and expand approaches to the world, experiences of the world and the exploration of the world. Precisely because the world is divided, shared and distributed, education and upbringing should enable expansions and transformations of these approaches and thereby bring forth individuality and subjectivity. Contrary to the pedagogical objectification of the world, the lecture aims to attune the audience to an experience in and with the world that, according to J.L. Marion, can be seen as an event and the opening of a relationship that opens up from ‘elsewhere’ and ecstatically transforms our physical being-in-the-world. As will be shown, everyday movement experiences in practising can reveal an eventful relationship to the world that eludes conceptual and scientific definitions, but can nevertheless, or precisely because of this, be experienced – in practising swimming, cycling and skiing. In this a double passivity emerges: in the negative experiences of learning and practising, the negativity of the world manifests itself in a mundane Bildung-event of experience and at the same time withdraws from it – an experience beyond conceptual and theoretical representation.


Prof. Brinkmann's homepage: https://hu.berlin/aew_eng
Symposion on Phenomenological Research in Education: https://hu.berlin/sym_phen_ed