5. Needs and Dangers of Ambitious Educational Ideals

Many, if not most debates in contemporary educational thinking and policy pit two fundamentally opposed views against each other. On the one side, there are researchers and policymakers chiefly concerned with finding ways of reliably fostering skills that will assumedly be important for future success at work and in practical life in general. On the other side, there are those—often more philosophically minded educationalists—who insist that education should aim both higher and broader. They do not wish teaching to become guided by narrow concerns for employability or measurable skills. Instead, they want to maintain a focus on the learner as a complete human being, including her personal well-being, her role as a citizen in democratic society and in the world as a whole, her capacity for aesthetic and cultural expression and her moral character.

It is easy to sympathize with the latter view, especially if one takes philosophical approaches to education seriously. Yet the more practically, short-term result oriented educationalists do seem to have some strong arguments. There is no denial, they might say, that the broader goals are highly desirable in principle. The problem is their lack of feasibility. They may be difficult to achieve at any rate, and their possible realization will be costly and so leave too few resources for other, philosophically less exciting, but no less important educational aims. Students will be better served by acquiring a set of useful skills than by picking up bits of humanist jargon or embarking on a journey towards self-cultivation which will bring them nowhere near the actual goal. Proficiency in reading and math is valuable even in the absence of a cultivated personality; by contrast, superficial or partial cultivation is of little use to someone who lacks such basic skills.

Kierkegaard was all too far removed, both in time and in terms of interests, from the current educational debate to have held any definite view on these issues. Still, his thinking may help to illuminate them in certain respects—and, conversely, the issue of ideal versus more practical aims may shed light on the relevance of Kierkegaard’s thinking to contemporary educational concerns. Though we have already explored several ways in which it might be able to guide, or at least inspire, educational practice, there is still reason to doubt that it has any practical significance beyond the exclusive domain of philosophical inquiry.

I have repeatedly voiced a concern that Kierkegaard’s thinking may, for all its intellectual brilliance and suggestive power, be too far removed from the actual concerns of teachers and educational policymakers. There is a legitimate worry that the more Kierkegaard succeeds in exposing superficial ideals and half-hearted commitments, the more he renders his own thinking practically irrelevant. Ordinary students, it might be thought, are simply not up to the formidable existential task set by his philosophy. If we take it to embody an educational ideal—and even this may be to read too much into it—then this ideal appears extremely ambitious. Kierkegaard puts authenticity and fundamental character development above all; he requires a total integration of the knowledge and skills of an individual into her personality, and the unreserved, indeed passionate commitment of the individual to her own process of self-cultivation and self-realization.

It is not, however, obvious that Kierkegaard’s ideal is extremely ambitious in all respects. The very distinction between ambitious—or ideal—and realistic views on education may be too simple, as there are several ways or dimensions in which one can be ambitious, with very different practical consequences. Kierkegaard’s thinking is a case in point.

Kierkegaard always insisted that his thinking was in no way esoteric or exclusive. He placed himself in a long tradition of philosophers who have portrayed themselves as being on the side of the man or woman on the street, using their sophisticated intellectual tools mainly to ward off attacks to the integrity and possibility of ordinary, honest life. His notion of an authentic life did not require any particular sophistication. Judge Vilhelm of Either-Or II presents himself as much simpler-minded than his young adversary. There is undoubtedly an element of pretense to that, as the judge does reflect quite deeply on his life and obviously knows the philosophical movements of his time very well. Yet it is correct that the ideal championed by the judge is not that of a brooding intellectual or a perfectionist Renaissance man. He cherishes a straightforward, if not exactly simple, life, which is in many ways quite conventional, and only differs from that of the existentially unenlightened in being based on a commitment to become oneself and do the good (which, as we have seen, Kierkegaard considers to be one and the same, thereby further relieving the individual of the burden of having to learn a complex system of moral rules and principles).

It may still be thought, however, that the very emphasis on the existential dimension of learning is implicitly elitist. Existential questions are widely seen as luxury problems, which only seem important to those who have already met their basic material and psychological needs. According to this view, mass education should focus first on fostering basic skills, second on fostering more special competences required for functioning in society and mastering one’s life—and only then can one spur existential reflection, as the pedagogical icing on the cake.

However, Kierkegaard strongly disputed the view that existential questions are exclusive and difficult to grasp. He took them to be absolutely ubiquitous, ingrained in the very nature of a human being:

Every man, however modest his talent, however subordinate his position, feels a natural need to form a view of life, a conception of life’s meaning and aim (E/O 493; SKS 3, 175).

This might seem like an implausible, or at any rate quite unsubstantiated, psychological hypothesis. It is made more plausible by Kierkegaard’s belief that both the conception and the need for it may remain highly implicit. He acknowledges that the philistine has no awareness of existential questions, but assumes that she will nevertheless experience a lack of meaning, which is a symptom of unsatisfied existential needs. Even the ethical character—of which Judge Vilhelm may, after all, not be the best example, because he, as a spokesperson for his mode of existence, is extraordinarily explicit and reflective—need not form any set of existential beliefs. The ethical need only to be acted out; the answer to the existential question, as well as the recognition of it as such, is given in the existential response, which consists in an action based on an affective state.

Existential education, according to this view, is not necessarily concerned with philosophical questions, abstract reflection or skills for arguing and debating. It is even questionable whether philosophy is conducive to it at all. It is possible, if not likely, that philosophical activities, which almost inevitably consist in setting different views up against each other and assessing their relative strengths and weaknesses, will lead the student to adopt a more detached stance. They could make her into a spectator of, rather than a participant in, her own life.

It is surely debatable how positively Kierkegaard’s preference for resoluteness and action over detachment and observation should be assessed. It may be argued that from a more general, moral or political point of view, the world needs more balanced and considered judgment and less passion-driven immediate action. But in any case, the non-theoretical character of existential knowledge makes Kierkegaard’s notion that existential questions are of significance to everyone more plausible. This, in turn, means that such questions are not too ‘lofty’ to be part everyday educational efforts. I have characterized Kierkegaard’s notion of self-cultivation as extremely demanding. However, it is only more demanding than other comparable notions in requiring a high degree of personal commitment and existential integration. It is not especially demanding when it comes to the content that has to be learned. And so it seems fair to say that the charge of overkill is more apt in the case of views inspired by the Aristotelian perfectionism, which is very popular among educational thinkers today (see for example, Nussbaum 1997). In contrast to such views, Kierkegaard does not require that education should foster any sophisticated virtues or greatly expand the learner’s cultural horizon. To a certain extent, his view is compatible with the idea of cosmopolitan or multiculturalist education. But he warns against the kind of cultivation that may lead to cultural uprooting or a disoriented personality. In short, he is ambitious about the depth, but not the breath or complexity of education.

Educators should take seriously both the risks and the potentials associated with Kierkegaard’s educational ideal. Kierkegaard himself, it should be remembered, warned against the likely misuses of the ideals of authenticity and self-cultivation. This warning pertains even to his own versions of them. His understanding of authenticity may not by itself be overly demanding, but the task of implementing it in educational efforts may still be very difficult and risky. On the other hand, their importance is great enough for it to be worth the risk trying. To always care, at least implicitly, for the personal appropriation of what is taught and its possible contribution to personal development seems to be a sensible maxim.

To sum up: The risks associated with existential education are (i) that it may foster an exaggerated seriousness and a desperate and ultimately self-alienating attempt to become oneself; (ii) that it may foster an overly smooth or smart cognitive and emotional flexibility that makes the student unable to make clear choices or confront serious matters; (iii) that cultivating the student’s enjoyment of her own intellectual and cultural—or even existential—accomplishments may lead her to irresponsibly indulge in them and (iv) that it may lead to a kind of subtle ‘snobbism’, celebrating existential sophistication at the expense of more mundane qualities.

There is the further question of whether it is possible to adopt aspects of Kierkegaard’s thinking in a more selective and limited form, or using them in a more instrumental fashion. In spite of Kierkegaard’s uncompromising stance on many issues, it is hard to see why this should not be the case. No doubt Kierkegaard was critical of the tendency to reduce education to schooling or vocational training, and he wrote disdainfully about imparting ‘atomistic knowledge to students’. But this did not prevent him from acknowledging the importance of acquiring metacognitive skills (even speaking of nurturing ‘a constant mental mobility’ as one of the benefits of the Socratic method). He described teaching methods, like prompting students to think for themselves by exposing one’s limitations as a teacher, which may be put to use for more limited purposes. He also saw a close connection between self-cultivation and vocation. By exposing the aesthete’s tendency to ‘engage in all sorts of breadless skills’ (E/O 239; SKS 2, 287), he implicitly emphasized the importance of having specific practical tasks and also indicated that the contrast between liberal education and vocational training may be exaggerated. By showing how mundanely useful pursuits may at the same time help realizing higher goals, he set himself apart from the German Bildung-movement, which put more emphasis on freedom from external goals and advocated a more leisurely, gentleman-like approach to education.

It is not even clear that authenticity—the final and fundamental aim of education for Kierkegaard—cannot also be exploited for more mundane purposes. Things can have both intrinsic and instrumental value, and their worth need not be compromised by taking advantage of the latter. Kierkegaard does seem to assume that coming to terms with oneself will also manifest itself in some kind of practical success. The authentic person is able to concentrate on really important matters and making more of her life; she has a higher degree of resilience and perseverance. A vivid example of this kind of practical side-effect of becoming oneself is given by Tolstoy in War and Peace: the main character, Pierre Bezukhov, is intelligent and well meaning, but lacks a direction in life and indulges in idealistic and emotional fancies. Narrowly escaping execution by the French, and experiencing the wise simple-mindedness of a peasant co-prisoner, Pierre is finally able to come to terms with himself and the human condition. From then on his life changes completely, though many things apparently stay the same. He marries and settles down, and while he is still awkward and makes almost as many mistakes as before, his life has now become more ‘coherent’, and he is even able to ‘[get] on with less money’ (Tolstoy 2006, Epilogue, Part I, Chap. 12).

Such practical side-effects of authenticity are, of course, very different from employability or the skills needed to progress to higher education. The practical benefits are on a more fundamental level, having to do with basic mastery of life. On the other hand, this is not irrelevant to the more mundane educational goals. Kierkegaard does describe authenticity as being instrumental to motivation, attentiveness and perseverance. He not only advocates educating for authenticity, but also education by, or based on, authenticity.

Still, it makes sense to relate Kierkegaard’s thinking to contemporary trends and discussions which have juxtaposed education and learning and cultivation in a broader sense. According to a popular diagnosis, in the last half-century, the notion of education has been at once narrowed down—making it almost synonymous with formal education and curriculum-driven instruction—and expanded in that it has been applied to still more domains, from early childhood care to university studies (Kristensen 2017).

It can be argued that this diagnosis is too crude and ignores the fact that there is still a considerable diversity of aims and types of pedagogical activity. Yet it is hard to deny that there is something to it (even though Kierkegaard’s criticism of the focus on ‘useful’ knowledge in the teaching of his day shows that the tendency is far from new; it can be traced back so far as to the ancient Greek Sophists, who were criticized for it by Plato).

This may sound paradoxical since Kierkegaard’s approach also seems distinctively ‘student-centred’. Is it not all about bringing the student to grasp her own subjectivity and think for and become herself? It is—but this does not mean that the teacher should tailor her teaching exclusively to the interests and abilities of the student. Existential education aims at making the student become, and not merely be, herself.

Kierkegaard describes the movement towards authenticity as a transformative and disruptive process. This requires the teacher to take a more active role and not just ‘deliver the curriculum’ or gauge and adapt to the student’s situation. Teaching has to be more confrontational, even if the teacher should not put herself in the centre.

This again raises the question of feasibility. The teacher is required to invest herself personally, even exposing herself, while doing it in such an inconspicuous fashion she will not be credited, at least not immediately, for the success. Since she may also have less time to deliver the curriculum, she can also come under further pressure because of—legitimate—expectations as to what should be taught and learned, content-wise. In short, teaching seems to become a quite demanding and unrewarding job. Such concerns should be taken seriously. Business, as usual, can be justified by the general human need, to be found in both teachers and students, to work in an undisrupted, habitual fashion at least some of the time.

Nevertheless, it remains a sensible ideal that a teacher should challenge students and bring her own personality into play, if only very implicitly, and in the course of standard curriculum delivery. When it is made clear that it is more about teaching in a certain way than about complementing one’s usual teaching with some separate and more or less spectacular ‘existential’ teaching, the ideal comes to appear neither unrealistic nor unacceptably burdensome. Kierkegaard may seem to demand of the teacher that she should go beyond the general ‘teacher ethos’; but it could also be argued that it is part of this ethos that a teacher should always to some extent be—or at least strive for becoming—personally and passionately engaged and for achieving some of her educational goals in virtue of this engagement.

A related implication of Kierkegaard’s thinking is that there is no simple continuum of skills and competences. He did not believe self-cultivation of the genuine kind to simply flow from acquisition of knowledge and competences. He did require a specific cultural material to work on and gave importance to mastery of socially acknowledged tasks. But he maintained that self-cultivation represents a qualitatively new level of development, as it requires a personal commitment which is not inherent in task mastery or knowledge possession as such. In this respect, his conception is clearly one of transformative learning (see Sect. 1.​3), in a more radical way than what is currently so-called. Education for authenticity is thus not ‘education’ in the contemporary narrow sense, though it may be quite compatible with, and even a necessary and intimate companion to, schooling, instruction and curriculum-driven activities.

This means that not only teaching but also teacher education should ideally include a moral dimension. As long as this is not understood as an obligation to teach moral philosophy, but only as requiring that students should be prompted to develop an appropriately committed attitude, it need not lead to any exaggerated academization. But it implies that future teachers should also be taught and not just treated as learners, a self-sufficient individual whose potential has to be brought out. This is indeed ambitious, but not necessarily overly so in the sense of demanding too much in terms of resources or intellectual abilities of students and teachers.

It should have become abundantly clear—and come as no surprise, anyhow—that Kierkegaard’s contribution to educational thinking consists more in raising important questions than in providing clear answers. He did make a number of positive contributions, however, that deserves to be emphasized. The most important of these may be his insistence that the mode and attitude matter more than the content of knowledge, learning and teaching. He may have played down the importance of content excessively, but he was probably right in pointing out that the content does not by itself determine how—or whether at all—it is picked up, applied or realized, and that there are different ways of knowing, learning and living that deserve to be recognized as such. Another positive and pervasive point is that learning is a strongly holistic, but also centred and focused affair. Its various elements have to be connected and animated by a common and fundamental attitude. Kierkegaard develops this point beyond the platitudinous principles of the earlier conceptions of Bildung, which implied that an integrated personal character would gradually emerge from the interaction between the individual, cultural content and the wider world. He can be said to have corrected the romantic fancies typical of such thinking—including much contemporary philosophy of education—by acknowledging the mundane and practical aspects of learning and insisting that successful cultivation should produce a firm, rather than a polished personality, and so needs a sense of direction.

Last but not least, Kierkegaard conceived of educational means and in ends in a way that may mitigate between approaches that seem mutually exclusive. He champions an ambitious notion of self-cultivation, but he allows for such cultivation to take place through rather mundane and immediately useful learning activities. Though one would expect his thinking to fall on the idealist side, and support an exclusive approach, it turns out on inspection to be rather flexible and inclusive.

I have argued that Kierkegaard delineated a view that is fundamentally compatible with many acknowledged practices and need not put any undue strain on students or teachers. But as he himself pointed out, even the best of ideals may become abused (he even indicated that the better the ideal, the greater the risk). Though his positive contributions should be kept in mind, perhaps this is, in the end, the most important part of his educational legacy: that he pointed out the many and often subtle ways in which well meaning activities, including the project of becoming oneself or educating for authenticity, can turn into their opposite. Since the full significance of this point can hardly be grasped without actually trying for oneself, it is also an exemplary piece of indirect communication.