Norm Friesen

I thought I’d one of the most famous of McLuhan’s texts: His interview with Playboy Magazine from March of 1969. He is at his most exuberant and outspoken throughout, especially in describing his vision of a “new society” of “mythic integration” that will emerge through new electronic media. So here it is with original pagination, even advertising (which McLuhan celebrated as the greatest art of our time–you be the judge).
I’m not sure why this hasn’t been done before, but better late than never!

I’ve been working with my colleague, Karsten Kenklies, on translating Schleiermacher’s 1826 Introductory Lecture on Education (Erziehung). Here’s a couple of key passages from the first, translated half of the lecture, which seeks to provide the “Outlines of the Art of Education and Upbringing (Erziehung)”

Download some selections from Schleiermacher’s opening.

About a new book, written by Ralf Koerrenz, forthcoming from Palgrave, edited and co-translated by yours truly:

Otto Friedrich Bollnow, one of the most famous of Martin Heidegger’s students, developed a philosophical approach to education that brought Heidegger’s existentialism together with other theories of what it is to be “human.” The result is an approach to education that is at once accessible but nuanced, general and comprehensive but also concrete and particularistic. This introduction to Bollnow is the first to provide a biographical and thematic overview of his philosophy of education. It begins with a summary of the theoretical influences that Bollnow synthesized, and then outlines Bollnow’s highly original account of experiential “educational reality” –namely, as a reality alternately “harmonious” or “broken,” but fundamentally “guided.” This book will be of value to scholars and students of education and philosophy, especially those interested in bringing larger existential questions into connection with everyday educational engagement.

See sample (table of contents and first chapter).

On January 27, I gave paper at the Institute of Education at UCL London. The topic was Klaus Mollenhauer’s conception of Education and Bildung –as articulated in his Forgotten Connections: On Culture and Upbringing.

The abstract is below; and here’s a link to the complete text of my talk.

The talk was based on Mollenhauer’s Introduction to his text, which can be accessed here.

Klaus Mollenhauer’s Forgotten Connections: Education as Remembrance

Franz Kafka opens his intimate “Letter to his Father” by admitting that he simply cannot come to terms with his own upbringing and Bildung –“because the magnitude of the matter goes far beyond the scope of memory and understanding.” This admission is used, perhaps paradoxically, to introduce and frame an educational “undertaking of remembrance” attempted by German educationist Klaus Mollenhauer in his book Forgotten Connections: On Culture and Upbringing. Here, Mollenhauer also asserts that “further[ing] the cause of memory” is no less than the “purpose of education” itself, adding that he is referring not only to individual biographical recollection, but also to “collective memory – our common cultural heritage whose core themes education attempts to tease out.”

In this presentation, Dr. Norm Friesen (Boise State University) discusses a number of core themes that emerge from this effort for Mollenhauer. These include Mollenhauer’s understanding of Bildung as a biographical and experiential “way of the self” that is marked by a particular “pathlessness.” Referencing Wittgenstein in ways unconventional for education, Mollenhauer shows how this path or pathlessness is characterized not so much by success and triumph as by loss and renunciation. These themes also include the recovery of a concrete, even indexical language for education, rather than one abstract and generalizing. Finally, Dr. Friesen will suggest with Mollenhauer that the broader task of remembrance, and thus of education itself, is as much one of difficulty and paradox as it is one of recuperation and clarification.