Authority in the Classroom: The Critical Potential of Gadamer's Rehabilitation of Authority

To the extent that we do not think critically about the matter of authority in education, we are likely to teach much that we would prefer students would not learn: how to submit to authorities, how to play along with unspoken power dynamics through a form of mutual pretense, or the belief that genuine freedom lies outside of the philosophy classroom and not within it, and so on. I argue that Hans-Georg Gadamer’s account of authority offers a series of conceptual distinctions and arguments that can be used to clarify some of the complex dynamics of authority that frame our teaching contexts. In section one, I briefly survey the present state of literature on the topic of Gadamer’s philosophy of education and his account of authority. While much useful work has already been done, there remains a need to grasp just how central the concept of authority is to Gadamer’s thinking about education, or to consider what concrete consequences this concept may hold for our pedagogical work. In section two, I outline the main lines of Gadamer’s concept of authority, paying particular attention to those places where he explicitly connects the concept to educational contexts. Finally, I consider ways in which Gadamer’s work facilitates critical reflection on ourselves as philosophy teachers, and challenges common assumptions about authority and pedagogy.