Phronesis as the Educational Outcome of Hermeneutics

Abstract

'Practical Wisdom' is often quoted as Being the offspring of the marriage of experience and knowledge, but what precisely makes it so pragmatic, and why is it considered to be wise? An interpretive investigation into some of the canonical source of modern hermeneutic theory in education reveals that the elements of the other, concernful Being, suspicion and play are amongst those at work in constructing both the discourse regarding how authentic learning of the 'new' occurs, but also in that very process itself. Dangers and risks associated with the encounter with otherness as a strange and threatening exercise are also examined, with a view to understand them as in part emanating from the structure of educational institutions and the
persona of teachers in the classroom. The text concludes with a sense that to discover the meaning of the new is to rediscover one's own origins, as the learning process creatively reproduces every beginning of self-understanding.