Composing a Student: An Analysis of Learning and Knowledge Formation

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”

-Socrates

So often in life we tend to see events, experiences, and changes as static, linear, discrete, and separate. When looking back at a photo album of one’s life they might say, “This is when I graduated high school” or “Oh, look at this photo of me at my wedding!” Some of these moments in life certainly do illuminate brighter from the foreground; however, even during the most important moments of our lives, we are in motion. We are always becoming and unfolding. We ebb and flow across Being while all the while wanting to see everything as chosen, boxed-off, compartmentalized, and obtained. It is difficult, if not impossible, to separate changes in our identities and experiences from our learning in and about the world. As such, the question arises, are we all always students if we are always learning? What happens when we become conscious of the world? What is the relationship we have to world? What does it mean to ask a question and to be a student? If there are students, who are the teachers? How do we learn and just exactly what does it mean to learn and to know anyhow? Utilizing the theoretical lenses of phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and critical theory, we may conduct a philosophical investigation into the composition of a student enabling us to develop a useful analytic-narrative tool for living more intentionally and authentically as curious subjects in this world.

The Subject Who Asks

In an effort to investigate and discuss the composition of a student, one must begin with the subject who asks. Note, that this initial step is not to be confused with the question of the question; that is, not with the asking, but rather, with the formation of the subject thrown into being. Indeed, before even coming to the annunciation of the question asked by the subject of the world, we must first develop some schema or process of investigation, which is not static but dynamic in its applicative capacities. This analysis must begin with the formation of the subject and the formation of the frame in which the subject is immersed in.

Formation of the Subject

A survey of the history of philosophical inquiry will quickly reveal a deep and abiding concern for explaining not only human life but origins generally. Indeed, the majority of our inquiries regarding origins have issued forth with the goal of explanation. Sadly, while humanity’s greatest thinkers were off trying to solve the question of origins, they forgot to explore Being. Martin Heidegger asserted as much at the beginning of the 20th century just some decades after the rise of phenomenology. In Being and Time, Heidegger writes, “To Being-in-the world, however, belongs the fact that it has been delivered over to itself that it has in each case already been thrown into a world” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 236). Rather than offering a story or narrative or explication of origin, when considering the beginning of the subject/being, to which he calls Dasein, Heidegger works to describe the facticity of being. We will use the word subject and Dasein interchangeably although it is important to note that each of these terms are unique in their own right and carry immense baggage regarding what they mean and how they are utilized in discourse. Being-in-the-world, the subject, begins its formation by being always-already in the world. As Heidegger notes, we are all thrown into Being—not from without but always-already as being-in-the-world.

It is important to note that the facticity of the subject is not in and for itself; that is, our subjectivity is not experientially solipsistic. Rather, the subject, the human life, is always one of relation to world—not as distinct objects but as an always relating. Political philosopher Hannah Arendt underscores this observation in stating that: “No human life, not even the life of the hermit in nature’s wilderness, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings” (Arendt, 1958, p. 32). Simply stated, no one, despite our thrownness, is an island—as the old adage states. The Father of Phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, describes the subject’s thrownness in this way in his magnum opus, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology: “Within the bounds of positivity we say and find it obvious that, in my own experience, I experience not only myself but others—in the particular form: experiencing someone else” (Husserl, 1977, p. 149). He continues: “‘In’ myself I experience and know the Other; in me he becomes constituted—appresentatively mirrored, not constituted as the original” (Husserl, 1977, p. 149). There are some distinctions among thinkers about where the Other is in relation to the subject; this line of examination will largely be bracketed for our purposes here. Rather than getting trapped in metaphysics, this construction of a means for exploration will focus on the event of formation.

Historically, philosophy and psychology have been helpmates to one another during this analysis—specifically existential-phenomenology and psychoanalysis. Following what appears to be a useful and helpful pairing, we too will utilize psychoanalysis for the purpose of further elucidating the formation of the subject that finds itself thrown-into-being. In discussing the formation of the subject, psychoanalysis has historically made a claim regarding the subject as a constructed and partitioned “ego” that is split. The French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, provides a helpful symbol and narrative of the formation of the subject by discussing a mirror—famously labeled the “mirror stage.” Lacan writes, “We have only to understand the mirror stage as an identification, in the full sense that analysis gives to the term: namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image – whose predestination to this phase-effect is sufficiently indicated by the use, in analytic theory, of the ancient term imago” (Lacan, 2007, p. 1). In other words, Lacan, after researching and observing the psychosocial development of children, posits that prior to viewing oneself in a mirror (Note: this should not be taken literally, though it could be literal) the subject is not divided up. There exists no subject-Other divide. In a sense, subject-mother is all one. However, when the subject experiences self as other, as an ideal image, it becomes barred. Lacan continues, “This jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the infans stage, still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling dependence, would seem to exhibit in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject.” (Lacan, 2007, pp. 1-2) Here Lacan further discusses the precipitation of the I before becoming objectified via dialectic identification. This near-universal experience of the subject is something that intensifies throughout the subject’s life—especially if said subject is thrown into a Westernized frame and understanding of subjectivity. The subject continues to become sliced-up with language and through psychodynamic negotiations between self and Other. Lacan concludes his exploration in stating the following: “I am led, therefore, to regard the function of the mirror-stage as a particular case of the function of the imago, which is to establish a relation between the organism and its reality – or, as they say, between the Innenwelt and the Umwelt” (Lacan, 2007, p. 3). The tool of psychoanalysis then therefore functions as an illustration for not how to become like a map, but rather, a description of what appears to happen. In this sense, the question of whether this theory is true or false is irrelevant—in a sense—it is truer than true in its function as narrative which illuminates our experience and formation.

Formation of the Frame

In discussing the formation of the subject, it is impossible to do so, as we have seen thus far, without discussion and examination of the frame in which the subject is thrown. It is important also to note that these analyses of formation are not and should not be understood linearly. While language tends to be organized and structured in order to hopefully convey information and experience to an other, for example—this analysis in essay form—such topics discussed here are always-already happening without much or any order or temporal sequence. The topics at hand for analysis simply serve as a means to explore a tremendously difficult subject to investigate and discuss. In a sense, they work to frame the experience. In his analysis of Immanuel Kant and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Coole describes the frame of the subject in terms of perception: “Perception is an act of a situated, because embodied, being. It is therefore perspectival: it can gain no bird's-eye view. It can traverse its landscape to gain new perspectives but only at the expense of closing off others” (Coole, 1984, p. 521). Following Merleau-Ponty, Coole argues that perception is situated because being is always embodied. This not only implies some sense of perspectival epistemology, but also that embodiedness creates and is created by closings and openings to Others. Coole continues in saying, “Both truth and reason are therefore processes whereby significance is engendered; they are intersubjective projects which are not guaranteed but which are tasks that are also political insofar as social institutions are more or less open to the discovery, integration, generation of new meaning” (Coole, 1984, p. 521). It is significant to note here that Coole refers to truth and reason as processes here. Processes that are intersubjective projects; that is to say, negotiated experiences which are always in relation to the world—often referred to as one’s lifeworld. Following this notion of intersubjective projects taking place in political and social institutions, critical theorists have sought to expand and explore how subjectivity is taken up intersubjectively. Theorist and philosopher, Judith Butler, in their text, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? posits the following understanding of our condition: “There is no life without the conditions of life that variably sustain life, and those conditions are pervasively social, establishing not the discrete ontology of the person, but rather the interdependency of persons, involving reproducible and sustaining social relations, and relations to the environment and to non-human forms of life, broadly considered” (Butler, 2016, p. 42). In their consideration of what life is valuable they consider life as that which is grievable. While primarily exploring ethical considerations in the text, Butler begins their approach to difficult problems phenomenologically with the description of being as fundamentally interdependent and relational.

Following from the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein’s work, Butler continues their assessment of the formation of the subject in relation to their framing in the following quotation: “Who "I" am is nothing without your life, and life itself has to be rethought as this complex, passionate, antagonistic, and necessary set of relations to others. I may lose this "you" and any number of particular others, and I may well survive those losses. But that can happen only if I do not lose the possibility of any "you" at all. If I survive, it is only because my life is nothing without the life that exceeds me, that refers to some indexical you, without whom I cannot be.” (Butler, 2016, p. 44) Not only are we constituted by a necessary relation to a set of others, other as too to us, and with each set of necessary relations, regardless of the particularities of specific others, we are framed. How we think, what we think, how we feel, what we feel. This is not to say that we are all overly-determined, but rather, that we operate in constructing nets of meanings through fluid signifiers and signifieds. As curriculum theorist Marla Morris puts it, “Nothing happens in a straight line. Life is like an ongoing tangent. Nothing is finished. Things seem chaotic. History is happening all around us but to try to capture the past—as well as the present—is nearly impossible” (Morris, 2015, p. 9). Therefore, it is here in this messy but beautiful tangential mess that we must begin if we are to approach the question of what a student is in an honest way. Here in the flux of intra and interpersonal convergences and divergences does the subject form and annunciate the question.

The Question

Now that a means of reflexive analysis through the apparatuses of phenomenology and Lacanian psychoanalysis has been established, a space of examination can be opened and studied regarding the question that the framed subject who is thrown-in-being asks regarding their facticity. Again, while this means of analysis or sense-making could be seen as a prescriptive system building, the intention here is as a tool for telling and sharing stories of experience intersubjectively. Focusing here in this section, we will pay particular attention not only to the formation of the question, but also to that of the formation of the student—in the most basic of understandings.

Formation of the Question

There, of course, is no singular question for each of us; however, many existential questions do appear to have some intersubjective universality. At the most rudimentary or radical level of our framed being comes the questions of who, what, when, why, and how—though in no particular order—at least not for this discussion. Some of these questions might, at first inspection, appear collapsible into more fundamental categories of questioning. For example, perhaps the who and what questions should be considered as one in the same. Does the subject who asks know an ontological difference between a who and a what? That is, do they know the subjectivity behind the eyes of the Other? We will return to this question when considering the formation of the student. For now, it is important to understand these existential questions as seekings. Indeed, Heidegger, remarks something similar in kind when considering inquiry: “Every inquiry is a seeking [Suchen]. Every seeking gets guided beforehand by what is sought. Inquiry is a cognizant seeking for an entity both with regard to the fact that it is and with regard to its Being as it is” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 24). Here, we see that not only is every inquiry a kind of seeking, it begs the question of what is being sought? Heidegger answers this for us in stating that the seeking itself is guided beforehand. For example, when the child asks “Momma?” the inquiry itself is guided by the framing of the experience of mother. Let’s unpack this some more after reading what Heidegger follows with. He states, “Any inquiry, as an inquiry about something, has that which is asked about [sein Gefragtes]. But all inquiry about something is somehow a questioning of something [Anfragen bei ...]. So in addition to what is asked about, an inquiry has that which is interrogated [ein Befragtes]” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 24). This is a very important consideration for this analysis. What Heidegger is suggesting here is that when a question is posed about something, it contains within it a questioning of that which is questioned. The easiest way to understand this is thinking about the question as both a seeking of information, but also of the it or who of the person or thing being asked. Why is this? It is because the subject is always-already in relation with the world. When we ask a question, it is always situated and directed and contextualized—this is how the question arises. Therefore, when the child asks, “Momma?” This does not translate as, “Are you the biological human female which birthed me?” Rather, the question is more closely aligned to, “Are you the face which has loved and comforted me?”

Doubtlessly, this way of thinking can be challenging as it seeks to really reflect meaningfully on the moment of experience without trying to capture it, label it, and stick it into a box. Sadly, throughout the history of Western philosophy, some have considered such explorations as meaningless or unfruitful. In the critical theorist Theodore Adorno’s Lectures on Negative Dialectics, Adorno calls this criticism into question. Adorno states: “Wittgenstein's statement that ‘What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence’16 is the anti-philosophical statement par excellence. We should insist instead that philosophy consists in the effort to say what cannot be said, in particular whatever cannot be said directly, in a single sentence or a few sentences, but only in a context. In this sense it has to be said that the concept of philosophy is itself the contradictory effort to say, through mediation and contextualization, what cannot be said hic et nunc; to that extent philosophy contains an inner contradiction, that is, it is inwardly dialectical in itself. And this perhaps is the profoundest vindication of the dialectical method, namely, that philosophy in itself – as the attempt to say the unsayable, before it arrives at any particular content or any particular thesis – is dialectically determined.” (Adorno, 2014, p. 7) Adorno states that this philosophy of specificity and logical reductionism is the epitome of anti-philosophy. In fact, if this is the case, Adorno argues that the kind of difficulty in talking about that which cannot be said, is exactly what philosophy is. Therefore, this is why the manner of how we ask the question about the formation of the question is so important. Beginning as early as this in the consideration of what is a student and what is knowledge with the intention of nailing down and absolving the question is exactly the kind of path that does not allow for intentional and authentic curious living. This exploration is not said or done briefly and is always in context, as Adorno states. Here in even writing this is not a mere explicative of information pre-arranged in the authors head, but rather as exploration to see what emerges as guided by other explorers and the leading question of what a student is composed of and how do we come about knowledge and learning.

Tying this analysis of the formation of the question together, Blok, in his article entitled “Heidegger and Derrida on the Nature of Questioning: Towards the Rehabilitation of Questioning in Contemporary Philosophy,” avers, “From a phenomenological point of view, we have to admit that all questioning presupposes a call: what does not have such a call on us is not questionworthy. Because the call concerns the whole of being, human Dasein is first of all included in this question of being.” (Blok, 2015). Here we see more of the same confirmation that prior to the formation of the question is the frame or what Blok and many others before him refer to here as the “call.” In our thrownness and intersubjective framing is a call to which we respond to with the utterance of a question. It is also important to note here that the question, while often literally a question, is not always that, but likely always contains that. For example, when the subject is split imaginably in the Mirror Stage or later symbolically with the cut of the Oedipus Complex, one may cry, “No!” While seemingly a statement, it is a response to the call and can be read with a multitude of implicit questions arising in the subject. What is certain, is that the call beckons a response.

Formation of the Student

Sometimes the most utilized of concepts are the most difficult to examine and reflect upon. This arises simply because often used words are used colloquially and denote simple definitions corresponding to objects of experience. For example, I say tree and you know enough of what I mean by tree to get along with everyday life. However, as we know, when I say tree, what really happens is more complicated because neither the signifier or the signified are static and objective, as Derrida points out famously in his Of Grammatology. Therefore, when considering the formation of the student, if I were to say, “What is a student?” to a friend, they might simply respond, “Someone who learns from a teacher” and carry on. Or, if I ask my wife this question, she might respond, “Oh Lord, not another one of your philosophical rabbit holes, Anthony.” However, this exploration need not be either. What the consideration of the formation of a student does require is a caring intentionality and openness of inquiry while being assisted by theory and the work of other caring thinkers.

When considering what a student is, there are many routes for reflection. The contextual web of meaning surrounding the word ‘student’ might include the following, taken from my own free association here and now: education, epistemology, knowledge, question, child, all of us, asking, pupil, reflecting, curiosity, call, response, pattern of questioning. A simple reflection of the word reveals a shifting network of meaning. Therefore, it is unsurprising that even when considering what the big names regarding philosophy of education and curriculum have to say is often in flux. In fact, Simpson notes in “John Dewey’s Concept of the Student” that: “Dewey's ideas regarding the child evolved throughout his life, but there is a remarkable continuity in his thought on the subject. For example, he had an abiding confidence in the child's nature and ability and believed that, when educators guide a student's growth, his or her natural tendencies lead to educative experiences and to a better functioning society” (Simpson, 2001, p. 185). Even John Dewey changed his mind often regarding the student; however, do note that he did hold to some continuity in his considerations. Continuity of the nature and ability of the student and in their relation to a teacher. This then brings us to the question, does the existence of a student require there to be a teacher of some sort for the concept to even have meaning? Is there then a difference between a ‘student’ and simply one who learns or a ‘learner’? Consider earlier when the question was asked whether the subject knows of the subjectivity of the Other when asking a question. In the call is there an understood difference between what and who? To be more precise, why do we often answer the call of the Other with “Who are you?” rather than “What are you?” Perhaps this depends on how much of ourselves we see in the other and could account for prejudices that are formed when the Other is too Other?

If we are to consider our prior discussion of the facticity and framedness of the subject, the question of who is the student appears to converge around this notion of always responding intersubjectively to the call. If so, there would appear to be no hard and fast rigid distinction between teacher and student. In fact, we may be acting our best when we are fulfilling both functions of our inquiring subjectivity. Founder of Montessori Education Maria Montessori, comments saying, “When the teacher shall have touched, in this way, soul for soul, each one of her pupils, awakening and inspiring the life within them as if she were an invisible spirit, she will then possess each soul, and a sign, a single word from her shall suffice; for each one will feel her in a living and vital way, will recognise her and will listen to her” (Montessori, 2012, p. 116). Rather than there being a list of criteria one must meet and then sirens and lights going off to notify you that you are in the position of student, it is a felt reality. Perhaps the most analytical thing that could be observed in a pattern of responses to the call of one’s subjectivity. A reoccurring and thirsty questioning. Montessori describes this relationship between educator and student here as having one’s soul touched and awakening and inspiring life. My only addition is that it appears this happens in both directions.

Formation of the Teacher

If learning is bidirectional, then the concepts of teacher and student are shaky and flexible in their spaces of demarcation, if such a thing exists. Therefore, the emphasis of the role of the subject is likely the best use of the terms. So, if the student is in the position of seeker, then what position is it that the teacher occupies? What is the formation of the teacher? This question of who or what is or should be a teacher is one that has been asked hundreds of times by many profound and famous thinkers. Including a brief survey then may be of some value. Stretching back over 2,400 years ago, the philosopher Aristotle spoke of education and teachers as that which works to “equip students to be free citizens (free of subservience to their desires, free from subservience to experts, genuine or bogus), which will involve studying the constitution, but also its rivals, since in various ways it might fail to be correct – fail to promote the common good” (Reeve, 2019). Aristotle is famous for his emphasis on cultivating a good life which he deems to be one of virtue. For Aristotle, the subject in the position of teacher is that of a guide. The teacher works to guide the student to being a good citizen and living a virtuous life—a good life. Reeve continues his description: “It should also be one that enables people to live well, to live a good life, in the society they belong to. And this is a matter of providing them with whatever is needed to access in the appropriate way the good things without which life is impoverished” (Reeve, 2019). Again, the student is guided by the teacher through the process of education to live well. This, of course, is something that is contextualized to the society in which the student and teacher belong to.

Furthermore, sometimes the best means of understanding what something is, is by understanding what it is not. In presenting a kind of Hegelian antithesis of the ideal teacher, Paulo Freire describes this individual as engaging in the “banking” method of education. Freire illustrates this “teacher” in the following way: “The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable” (Freire, 2017, p. 71). It is interesting that the way the teacher is described here is exactly the opposite of how we have worked through the formations of the subject, frame, question, and student. Through our analysis we have seen how reality is exactly not motionless, static, compartmentalized, or predictable. Rather, it is moving, in flux, dynamic, and unpredictable. Freire continues his description of the “banking” teacher: “Or else he expounds on a topic completely alien to the existential experience of the students. His task is to "fill" the students with the contents of his narration— contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them and could give them significance” (Freire, 2017, p. 71). Again, this is contrary to our analysis of the student. Remember that Maria Montessori spoke about the need to speak to the soul of the student. If a teacher makes no effort to speak to the “existential experience” of the student, there can be no hope of this occurring. There can be no hope of learning. There can be no hope of knowledge. Thankfully, Freire then expounds upon what then a teacher should be doing and what a teacher does look like: “From the outset, her efforts must coincide with those of the students to engage in critical thinking and the quest for mutual humanization. His efforts must be imbued with a profound trust in people and their creative power. To achieve this, they must be partners of the students in their relations with them” (Freire, 2017, p. 75). When we think about a concision, some imagery may come to mind. To coincide is to fit together. It is like a hand in glove. It is a mutual meeting. Indeed, Freire here describes the learning experience as a “mutual humanization.” He says they must be partners, yes. For, if only one soul arrives for a meeting, how can they be met? Piggybacking from the critical theorist, Patricia Foley’s A Case “for” and “of” Critical Pedagogy: Meeting the Challenge of Liberatory Education at Gallaudet University, Aliakbari writes, “Critical educators are concerned about emancipatory knowledge that helps students understand how relations of power and privilege distort and manipulate social relationships and help oppressed students by identifying with them” (Aliakbari et al, 2001, pp. 80-81). In a kind of combining of the visions of education which have been sighted here thus far: Dewey, Montessori, Aristotle, and Freire, Aliakbari provides insight into a kind of critical education. A critical education underscores the relational aspect of the meeting of teacher and education from Montessori and Freire and works to guide the student to the good life emphasized by Aristotle. In addition to meeting and guiding the student, a teacher identifies with the student and helps them to navigate their intersubjective socio-political horizons.

What is Knowledge?

Since we find ourselves in a lifeworld of intersubjectivity, there is no simple call and response to and from the individual subject—from each student; that is, the network of responses in the formation of questions and students are a multiplicity. In considering the lived experience of students who pose questions to the world—to others—we begin to develop a concept of learning as non-linear, dynamic, and continual processes. Borrowing from the imagery of a spider’s web to use as a metaphor, these complex interactions between subjects form what could be described as a web. But, a web of what? The web is a network of negotiated and shared signifiers and signifieds, of qualitative and quantitative comparisons of experiences, of expressions of emotion and developments of information. The web, is a web of knowledge.

Formation of Knowledge

It would be an understatement to say that the understanding and assessment of what is knowledge is a highly contested space. The scope and focus of this analysis is not one of epistemic surveyance. Only a very brief assessment of the history of epistemology need be necessary. Intellectual battles have been waged historically regarding what counts as knowledge and how is knowledge determined. For example, more than 1,500 years ago the philosopher, theologian, and Saint of the Catholic Church, Thomas Aquinas, created one of the many systems of epistemology. DeWulf describes it in the following passage: “The general ability to understand covers simple apprehension, judgment, and reasoning. Simple apprehension is when the mind accepts an object without affirming or denying it. The issue of judgment is the reality that two objects are in agreement or disagreement. Reasoning is the production of new judgment by means of two others” (DeWulf, 1959, p. 17). Here we can see that St. Thomas Aquinas puts forth a very logical and reasonable methodology for determining what knowledge is—specifically regarding the nature of Truth. While this system is may or may not be well designed and useful, it appears to miss something. Something that Freire was getting at in speaking about the “banking method” of education. Let us look at one more example, this one coming from the philosopher Immanuel Kant. Regarding the process of forming knowledge, Kant writes, “All our knowledge begins with sense, proceeds thence to understanding, and ends with reason, beyond which nothing higher can be discovered in the human mind for elaborating the matter of intuition and subjecting it to the highest unity of thought” (Kant, 2003). Kant worked to bridge together the two camps of rationalism and empiricism and in many ways, he was successful for many years. However, like St. Thomas Aquinas, something here too is missing when thinking about the formation of knowledge. Indeed, rather than working to identify the determiner of capital T truth, whether by way of reason, the senses, divine revelation, intuition, language, emotion, or imagination, if we want to know what composes a student, we must return to a more humanistic, existential-phenomenological, and relationally psychoanalytic manner to do so.

To be sure, during the time of the rationalization of all of history, in reaction to Hegel’s Science of Logic and Philosophy of History, the father of Existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard, echoed a similar concern to that of this essay’s. In his work entitled Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard makes the following assessment regarding truth/knowledge: “When truth is asked about objectively, reflection is directed objectively at truth as an object to which the knower relates. Reflection is not on the relation but on it being the truth, the true that he is relating to. If only this, to which he relates, is the truth, the true, then the subject is in the truth” (Kierkegaard, 2009, p. 167). Notice, Kierkegaard does not dismiss the notion of objective truth. It, unfortunately, is an all-too-common unsophisticated reading of Kierkegaard to understand him as saying that all truth is mere relative subjectivity. Rather, what we hear here is a voice of emphasis on the relationship. The truth can be the truth regardless of the subject, sure, maybe, whatever. However, it matters not if the subject cannot be in the truth. Therefore, knowledge/truth should not be viewed simply as some object to possess. There is more than that. Kierkegaard continues, “If the truth is asked about subjectively, reflection is directed subjectively on the individual’s relation; if only the how of this relation is in truth, then the individual is in truth, even if he related in this way to untruth” (Kierkegaard, 2009, p. 168). Here. It is here that we see the emphasis of the relation. The very same importance and emphasis on relation that has permeated this analysis—this seeking to feel into the composition of the student as student. Kierkegaard states here than even lead into untruth, the relation of the subject to the truth is important. Certainly, without this relating the knowledge is dead. Emmanuel Lévinas too echoes this understanding of knowledge formation in his text Totality and Infinity: “Meaning is not produced as an ideal essence; it is said and taught by presence, and teaching is not reducible to sensible or intellectual intuition, which is the thought of the same. To give meaning to one's presence is an event irreducible to evidence. It does not enter into an intuition; it is a presence more direct than visible manifestation, and at the same time a remote presence--that of the other. This presence dominates him who welcomes it, comes from the heights, unforeseen, and consequently teaches its very novelty.” (Lévinas, 1969, p. 66) Speaking here regarding meaning-making, a kind of knowledge formation, Lévinas is sure to dismiss a simple understanding of the formation as a kind of “ideal essence.” Rather that being taught via sense of reason, addressing the historical camps, Lévinas stresses that knowledge is formed by presence—by relation. He states that this presence is irreducible and that it “dominates” the welcomer. This comes as almost no surprise when following the direction of this analysis—just as being, call, response, student, and teacher are relational, so too is knowledge formed relationally.

Conclusion

We are so quick to want to capture and box-up knowledge. So often we think that if we just think hard enough or just do one more test or analyze the data one more time, that we can finally leap to our feet and interject, “Here! This is it! I’ve figured it out and know the truth!” To be sure, there is nothing inherently wrong about wanting to further our understanding of the world; however, the critique I want to make is that if that is done for its own sake, alienated, and disconnected, perhaps we are missing something important. If we want to know how to best teach student, perhaps learning more and more “effective teaching best practices” are not quite the solution or even the direction to look. If we want to know ourselves and the world, perhaps we need to reflect on how we are in the world, how we become who we are, what questions are we asking and from where do they emerge and what gives rise to them? How are we responding to the call of being? Are we meeting one another relationally? Do we want to conquer the world or do we want to live in it?

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