Original Research - Worldview & Education
Worldviews: A blessing or a curse?
Koers - Bulletin for Christian Scholarship/Bulletin vir Christelike Wetenskap | Vol 77, No 1 | a24 |
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/koers.v77i1.24
| © 2012 Bert Olivier
| This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 27 June 2012 | Published: 06 November 2012
Submitted: 27 June 2012 | Published: 06 November 2012
About the author(s)
Bert Olivier, Department of Journalism, Media and Philosophy, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South AfricaAbstract
The concept of a worldview resonates with other concepts, such as those of ‘culture’, ‘civilisation’, and ‘way of life’. Arguably, it is a modern phenomenon, the possibility of which was actualised at the dawn of the modern epoch. Nevertheless, in principle, its ‘possibility’ goes back as far as Plato’s Republic. It is Heidegger, however, who is most informative for understanding what a worldview is, as well as why the modern epoch is its time of provenance. Consequently, an analysis of Heidegger’s essay, ‘The time of the world picture’ (or worldview) provided the framework within which it was argued that worldviews are both blessings and curses in the current era: blessings, because, as Harries has argued, we have been disabused of the modern idea of one encompassing worldview or ideology, so that one can no longer believe in only a single ’correct’ view of the world; curses, because they bedevil any wellintended attempts at communicating with understanding on issues of common concern. It was the burden of this article to provide a way of addressing this state of affairs with some hope of transcending the causes of alienation and it is again Heidegger who is the source of such a way, through his notion of the ‘fourfold’.
Keywords
Fourfold; Heidegger; World Picture; Worldview
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