In this paper I am going to examine and discuss Martin Heideggers concept ”Das Man” and the closely related ”Man-Selbst” as they appear in his work Being and Time. My main goal is to argue for a normative understanding of these concepts and the overall theory surrounding them, i.e., argue for a reading in which Being and Time is not understood merely as a descriptive investigation of fundamental-ontological existentials, but also as arguing for a certain way we ought to exist, or rather: arguing for that we ought not to be in the way of ”Man-Selbst.” In order to do this, however, I need to introduce some of the key concepts of the work, such as ”Dasein” and ”In-der-Welt-sein”, and this is what the first part of the paper is dedicated to. In the second part I examine the methodology in Being and Time and how it necessitates a special kind of semantics called "formal indication." In the third part I more closely examine the passages of the work in which the key concepts ”Das Man” and ”Man-Selbst” appear. In the fourth I will lay out my arguments for the normative reading. / <p>Läsår Höstterminen 2018</p>

This essay set out to propose a problematic interpretation of the socio-cultural perspective on learning. Its purpose is to show how the socio-cultural perspective on learning defines the concept of knowledge in an incomplete way. The aim becomes then that of giving a more comprehensive description of this concept, and, to this end, to construct a new, broader pedagogic discourse. The investigation starts with a deconstructive analysis of Roger Säljö’s socio-cultural text in order to point out the incompleteness of the concept of knowledge. The constructive part of the analysis proceeds using Heidegger’s and Sartre’s philosophical theories which take a general approach on human learning and on human knowledge as dependent on intuition. A dichotomy of two new concepts related to knowledge is thus defined: how-knowledge and why-knowledge. This reconceptualisation of the concept of knowledge allows a reinterpretation of any act of knowledge in a structural way. Hence any act of knowledge includes a moment (a) which defines the initial contextual (conceptual or practical) situation; a moment (b) which represents an algorithm, a procedure, or a theory; and a moment (c) which represents the result of the act, and is the direct application of knowledge as a finalized entity. Knowledge inbuilt in (a) and (c) is characterized as how-knowledge, while that in (b) is characterized as why-knowledge. In a learning situation a focus on how-knowledge implies finality and objectification of students. Conversely, why-knowledge implies students becoming subjects of their own learning.

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