Egon Schütz

Egon Schütz (* 1932 in Castrop-Rauxel ; † 2015 in Düren ) was a German pedagogue and professor of general educational science , anthropology and ethics at the University of Cologne .

life and work

Egon Schütz is a representative of a phenomenologically oriented pedagogy and the founder of existential-critical pedagogy. He is a student of Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink . Egon Schütz was appointed to a chair for general pedagogy at the University of Cologne in 1981 after working at the Freiburg University and the College of Education there. In 1997 he retired.

After graduating from high school, Egon Schütz first studied English and German for teaching at the University of Freiburg from 1953. He received his PhD in English with a thesis on the romantic poet William Wordsworth (1959). Then he started his legal clerkship. After the second state examination, he took over an assistant position in educational science with Eugen Fink , which he held for many years (1962–1970).

Schütz closely followed, accompanied and continued the work of Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink in philosophy and education. The publication of Fink's “Basic Phenomena of Human Existence” and the lifelong discussion of Fink's thoughts on learning, advice, technology and coexistence bear witness to this.

Schütz is considered the founder of existential-critical pedagogy. In the field of phenomenological educational science, it represents an approach that combines phenomenological and philosophical thinking at the intersection of educational theory , anthropology and ethics with pedagogical fundamental reflection and didactic perspectives. Education is seen here as a practice between self-knowledge and judgment . The existential-critical pedagogy can be understood as an analytical as well as a practical attempt to redefine the problem of the relationship between educational theory and educational practice. Schütz sees education as a practice against the background of an anthropology that goes back to Heidegger and Fink, according to which the human being has to act and fail as an "existing relationship to truth, world and being" (Schütz) in cultural practices. In the analytical sense, on the one hand, different cultural dimensions of practice and experience are questioned regarding their pedagogy , on the other hand, objectivistic dimensions are viewed critically. The criticism of scientific universalization is accompanied by an ethos that tries to determine educational action within the horizon of responsibility, plurality and otherness and on the basis of personality and truthfulness.

Schütz is clearly in the tradition of phenomenology, in particular of the late Edmund Husserl and the late Martin Heidegger of the so-called "Kehre" and in the succession of the educational and social philosophy of Eugen Fink .

Works

• Freedom and determination. Theoretical reflections on the educational problem. Henn, Ratingen 1975.
• Authority. A treatise. Quelle & Meyer, Heidelberg 1971.
• Power and powerlessness of education. Deutscher Studien Verlag, Weinheim 1992.
• Existential-critical pedagogy. Phenomenological writings on the anthropological practice of education, art, language and humanism . ed. v. Malte Brinkmann. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016, ISBN 978-3-658-14509-5 .

Web links

• Egon Schütz Archive at the Humboldt University Berlin

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Basic phenomena of human existence. ed. by E. Schütz and FA Schwarz. 2nd, unchanged edition. Freiburg 1995, ISBN 3-495-47399-8 .
2. ↑ Malte Brinkmann: Phenomenological theory of Bildung and education. In: Michael A. Peters (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016, pp. 1–7. (on-line)