Ontology, Music, Education. Heideggerian inspirations

In the western world general music as educational subject seems to be increasingly under pressure by budget cutbacks as well as loss of status in the broad political mind. This music educational philosophical project expounds how Martin Heidegger’s philosophy points to the very heart of this crucial situation today, with a message that is both frightening and indeed hope-inspiring.

In Heidegger’s account this crisis is expounded as a surface symptom that leads back to a profound rupture or crack in the very foundation of our technical and rationalized modernity. Thus the project makes up an indispensable first step in our attempt to reconnect the cultural practices of education with music as a life confirming, existential phenomenon.

The project will be published as an anthology at Springer during 2014. The different researchers/authors will discuss how and why Heidegger’s thinking offers a cogent theoretical framework available for understanding why music as educational art subject seems to be in a general crisis of legitimization.

The project leaders and editors of the anthology are Frederik Pio (Department of Education, Aarhus University) and Øivind Varkøy.

Among other researchers/authors are: Karl Heinrich Ehrenforth and Lars Oberhaus (Germany), David Lines and Chris Naugthon (New Zealand), Charlie Ford & Lucy Green (England), Hanne Fossum, Morten Carlsen, Edvin Østergaard, Einar Rusten and Elin Angelo (Norway), and Susanne Leijonhufvud & Cecilia Ferm and Erik Wallrup (Sweden).