The Interlude of Philosophy: Philosophical education from Eugen Fink’s concept of play

In this poster, I present an interpretation of philosophical education––i.e., the educational activity that has philosophy as its subject matter––from Eugen Fink’s phenomenological concept of play. Drawing from the connections between philosophy, play, and education that can be traced following Fink’s works, I argue that an education in/of philosophy can be understood as the enactment of a pedagogical relationship that enables the renewal of philosophy. This enactment is constituted, on the one hand, by the relation established between teachers, students and the world of philosophy that is presented in the space and time of the school, and, on the other, by the attunement, or the pedagogical love, by virtue of which this relationship is maintained. This interpretation of philosophical education not only takes advantage of the philosophical richness found in Fink’s analysis of play and education but also shares his understanding of these as irreducible existential phenomena marked by a fundamental questionability. I do not attempt to equate play, philosophy, and education into a new construct but rather to consider how a philosophical education can appear from the co-respondence between these phenomena and their constitution of meaningful relations with ourselves, others, and the world. The resulting interpretation presents philosophical education as the inter-ludus of philosophy, that is, the activity of study that brings philosophy into play by suspending its determinations and re-presenting it as a common world that effectively begins again in and through its constitutive pedagogical relationships.