Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain

Annual Conference
New College, Oxford
30 March 1 April 2012


'Ahead of all Beaten Tracks': Ryle, Heidegger and the Ways
of Thinking

Miss Emma Williams

Institute of Education
elw@rugbyschool.net
























Ahead of all Beaten Tracks": Ryle, Heidegger and the Ways of Thinking

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1. AHEAD OF ALL BEATEN TRACKS

The purpose of this paper is to examine two philosophical accounts of thinking yet
examine them anew by considering what I take to be their under-examined relationship.
These are the accounts of Gilbert Ryle and Martin Heidegger. While the juxtaposition of
these names may strike the reader as unexpected, the place of either in a paper concerning
the issue of thinking in education is not unprecedented.
Although to a lesser extent than Ryle, Heidegger has been drawn upon by
philosophers of education such as Paul Standish (1992), Michael Bonnett (1994) and
Michael Peters (2007) in discussion of the different possibilities of thinking in education.
Somewhat more widely, Ryle has recently been utilised in discussions concerning what have
come to be called thinking skills. The influential McGuiness Report, for instance, employed
Ryles well-known distinction between knowing how and knowing that in order to clarify
the idea of thinking-as-a-skill and its relation to procedural rather than propositional
knowledge (McGuinness, 1999, pp. 4-5). In a similar way, adherents of thinking skills within
the philosophical community often draw upon Ryles notion of knowing how in an attempt to
make meaningful sense of this highly contested concept (for example Griffiths, 1987; Smith
2002).
However, there has also been some reservation about the use (or rather misuse) that
Ryles distinction has been put to here. Steven Johnson, for example, has claimed that Ryle
himself would have ridiculed the idea of teaching thinking as a skill and that the distinction
between knowing how and knowing that is educationally unhelpful (Johnson, 2001, p.
7). Johnsons target here is not so much Ryles distinction in itself, as the way it is naively
interpreted in much thinking skills literature. A more comprehensive consideration of Ryle is
offered by Christopher Winch (2010) in relation to vocational education. Winch draws
attention to the way Ryles distinction has been subject to a number of criticisms (see for
example Stanley and Williamson, 2001) and seeks to offer an account of practical
knowledge based on a less impoverished view of knowing how. Aside from the
particularities of his account, Winchs argument helps to demonstrate that Ryles philosophy
is at once more multifaceted and complex than the thinking skills literature is wont to
recognise. In fact, I would contend that this almost exclusive focus on knowing how and
knowing that obscures other significant aspects of Ryles reflections on the nature of
thinking from coming to the fore. For Ryles reflections on thinking are certainly not confined
to this distinction that is drawn primarily in the Concept of Mind. In fact, his concern with
thinking permeates the entire corpus of his work a corpus that, notably, begins with a
number of essays on phenomenology and ends with papers concerning the nature of
thinking. This paper will seek to attend to these under-represented aspects of Ryles work
and thus present an alternative reading of his contribution to our understanding of thinking
one that will open up an unforeseen relationship to the work of Martin Heidegger.
It is perhaps unsurprising that very little attention has yet been given to the
relationship between Ryle and Heidegger for they are often taken to belong to differing, even
conflicting, philosophical traditions. Nevertheless, this paper is driven by the belief that there
remains an under-examined affinity evidenced by the way both philosophers seek to open
up the nature of thinking and the thinking subject to a renewed philosophical
investigation. Indeed, this is a task that compels both (although in differing degrees) to
venture ahead of the beaten tracks of modern philosophy and its traditional language,
categories and concepts.
i
It is the localities of similarity and difference that arise as a result
of this shared enterprise that I wish to explore in this paper. The central premise is that
understanding the inter-relationship between Ryle and Heidegger sheds new light on their
respective accounts of thinking.
To this end, the paper will be structured as follows. In section 2 I will trace some of
the unrecognised affinities between these two philosophers by engaging with Ryles early
reception of phenomenology and identifying some shared tropes with Heideggers
engagement with Husserl. Section 3 will build on this by exploring the more direct
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confrontation that takes place between them in Ryles 1929 Review of Heideggers Being
and Time a Review that, notably, incorporates both a positive estimation and two-fold
critique of Heideggers philosophical project. In section 4 I will demonstrate how this inter-
relationship might be used to shed new light on the respective accounts of thinking offered
by these two philosophers. In particular, I will examine the adequacy of Ryles two-fold
critique against Heidegger and argue that, far from enacting a devastating blow to
Heideggers account, Ryles criticisms demonstrate his own failure to think outside certain
traditional philosophical assumptions (at least at this stage in his work). In section 5 I will
consider the extent to which this blindness is rectified in Ryles later reflections on the nature
of thinking, and again note some surprising affinities with Heidegger. Finally, in section 6, I
will summarise what this discussion means for our understanding of these two philosophical
accounts of thinking in terms of both their limitations and the ways of thinking they open.

2. A SHARED STARTING POINT

Including his Review of Heidegger, Ryle wrote a total of four papers on phenomenology
during his philosophical career. Contrary to what may be assumed, Ryle has both positive
and negative things to say about phenomenology in these papers. In what follows, I will
highlight the key aspects of this confrontation and consider their proximity to Heideggers
more well-known reception of phenomenological philosophy.

Positively

Throughout his essays on phenomenology, Ryle appears to be sympathetic to the way this
branch of philosophy sought to offer a new account of the mind - one that would overcome
the way mental life has been viewed by Modern Philosophy since Descartes. In particular,
Ryle appears taken by Husserls attempt to overturn the intellectualised, cerebral view of
thinking as the mere avalanche of atomic ideas and recognises with some positivity the
way Husserl seeks to replace this with a new approach that will study the lived experience
of our conscious life (Ryle, 1932, p. 175). Anyone more than a little familiar with the later
aspects of Ryles own work will not find his support for Husserl on these points particularly
hard to swallow. For, in a number of later essays on the nature of thinking, Ryle echoes
Husserls dissatisfaction with the view that thinking consists in the procession of ideas or
mental images, stating that these notions are nothing more than mythical introspectibles
that have arisen out of a philosophers epistemological fables (Ryle, 1953, pp. 307-308).
Furthermore, Ryle seeks to move his own account of thinking away from the traditional
chemists model of thinking and towards a more concrete analysis of what takes place in
stretches or incidents of thought (Ryle, 1962c, p. 461). Far from being in complete conflict
with this tradition, then, Ryle here appears to be supportive of both Husserls aim to escape
the faulty conception of the mind that has guided philosophical accounts of thinking hitherto
and the approach of studying the lived experience of conscious life adopted by Husserl to
achieve this. This is, in fact, an affinity that Ryle himself came to acknowledge stating as
he does that his own work could be described as a sustained essay in phenomenology, if
you are at home with that label (Ryle, 1962a, p. 196).
While such a positive estimation of phenomenology is perhaps not something we
would ordinarily expect from Ryle, it was a well-documented part of the early philosophy of
Martin Heidegger. Indeed, Heidegger famously accredited Husserl with giving him the eyes
with which to see and saw phenomenology as new and revelatory way of doing philosophy.
Yet it is notable that what was essentially revelatory about phenomenology for Heidegger
was its propensity to offer a new approach to studying our experiences one that would
afford a more concrete, historical and engaged account of the subject than has hitherto been
presented. It does not take too much of a leap to see that this brings Heidegger into
proximity with Ryle. For both thinkers essentially saw phenomenology as constituting an
advance insofar as it sought to overturn the intellectualism of previous philosophy in favour
of a more concrete consideration of our experiences.
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However, it cannot be said that either Ryle or Heidegger adopted Husserls
phenomenological project unquestioningly. In fact, each thinkers confrontation with
phenomenology had both positive and negative aspects. Having begun to glimpse a
similarity within their positive responses, let us now consider whether a corresponding
affinity exists within their respective critiques.

Negatively

Ryle articulates a number of objections against Husserl in his essays on phenomenology, a
key moment of which is his objection to Husserls doctrine of intentionality the claim that
all consciousness is consciousness of something. Ryle critiques this principle on the
grounds that it fails to achieve what Husserl intended. More specifically Ryle claims that, far
from overcoming the atomistic account of thinking, Husserls account of intentionality merely
reformulates the traditional subject-idea-object model of experience in different terms (Ryle,
1932, p. 182). There is not space to develop Ryles objection in full here. However it is
interesting to note that Ryle goes on to claim that this faulty principle of intentionality was,
in fact, not arrived at by genuine phenomenological analysis, but arose because Husserl
betrayed his original insight and allowed the prejudices of previous philosophers to infiltrate
his account (Ryle, 1932, p. 185). What Ryle objects to here, then, appears to be not so much
phenomenology in principle, as the way Husserl failed to stay true to his original
phenomenological project.
It is interesting to consider just how close this comes to Heideggers critique of
Husserl. For Heidegger, like Ryle, takes issue with Husserls notion of intentionality on the
grounds that it is simply a modification of the subject-object legacy and exemplifies Husserls
tacit retention of traditional philosophical concepts (Heidegger, 1925, p. 46). Heideggers
critique of Husserl, like Ryles, is centred on the claim that Husserl has admitted into his
account certain assumptions and principles that were not warranted by the
phenomenological method. As Heidegger puts it, in a way that Ryle himself might have
done, Husserl thus ends up in a position that is only purportedly phenomenological and not
genuinely phenomenological at all (Heidegger, 1925, p. 128).

Summary

In this way, a certain affinity between Ryle and Heidegger has started to unfold and one
that calls into question the oft-made presumption that these philosophers are strictly
polarised. Moreover, this is an affinity that will have significant implications for any
philosopher of education who wants to draw upon them in relation to a discussion of
thinking in education. For it is clear that both Ryle and Heidegger sought to challenge a
certain view of thinking viz. the abstracted, atomistic account of thinking that has been
inherited by philosophers since Descartes. To this end, they saw something positive and
radical within the phenomenological project and its possibilities for providing an account of
thinking that does justice to our concrete lived experiences although both were also
doubtful over the extent to which Husserl himself succeeded in achieving this aim.
Despite this shared starting point, it cannot be said that both philosophers remain in-
step. Indeed, the relationship between these thinkers is at once more complex when we
recognise that Ryle wrote a Review of Being and Time that was critical of Heideggers
attempt to rectify the deficiencies in Husserls phenomenology. However, and in a move that
again problematises any easy polarisation of these thinkers, Ryles Review is also at times
unequivocally positive with regards to Heideggers philosophical project. Indeed, Ryle
begins his Review with the declaration that Being and Time is a serious and important
philosophical work that marks a big advance in the application of the Phenomenological
Method (1929, p. 205). Moreover, he claims that Heidegger hereby shows himself to be a
thinker of real importance, and praises the boldness and originality of his methods and
conclusions and ... the unflagging energy with which he tries to think behind the stock
categories of orthodox philosophy and psychology (Ryle, 1929, p. 222). Yet these positive
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preliminaries are followed by two main objections to Heideggers project objections that
lead Ryle to ultimately conclude (albeit with humility and reservation) that Heideggers
philosophy constitutes an advance towards disaster. What is behind this critical turn?
Answering this question will take us into new territory regarding both these philosophers
inter-relationship and their respective accounts of thinking.

3. AN ADVANCE TOWARDS DISASTER?

Ryles negative appraisal of Heidegger arises out of his particular reading of Heideggers
project in Being and Time and the notions of Dasein and being-in-the-world in particular. In
order to fully understand his criticisms, it is first necessary to offer a brief sketch of Ryles
interpretation of Heidegger here.
Ryle begins his overview of Heideggers philosophy with the recognition that his
project in Being and Time is to explore the question of the meaning of Being and that his
method for doing so is to examine the Being of the one raising the question. Ryle then
acknowledges that Heidegger terms this being Dasein a move that he interprets as a re-
titling of the traditional I who thinks. Following this, Ryle turns to consider the way Dasein
is characterised by Heidegger as a being-in-the-world. For Ryle, this notion conveys the
idea that Dasein is a being-about and is through and through occupied with the world and
by it (Ryle, 1929, p. 216). Furthermore, Ryle states, it encompasses the idea that the world
that I am in is all that it means to me and is simply the sum of what I am about (Ryle,
1929, p. 216). A crucial upshot of this, Ryle notes, is that knowledge of the world thereby
becomes a derivative relation one that comes after such states as being-about or
wondering-about (Ryle, 1929, p. 216). Since Daseins being is, for Heidegger, essentially
characterised by care, willing wishing, wondering, reflecting, knowing are all essentially
ways of caring or caring about (Ryle, 1929, p. 217). Notably, Ryles reading of
Heideggers account of being-in-the-world does not go much further than this (except to say
that it comes close to Husserls doctrine of intentional consciousness (Ryle, 1929, p. 218)).
Yet it goes far enough for Ryle to level two main objections at Heideggers account of being-
in-the-world, as we can now see.

The knowledge objection

Ryles first criticism takes explicit issue with the way Heidegger makes knowledge a
derivative mode of experience within his account of being-in-the-world. According to Ryle,
Heidegger is fundamentally mistaken in doing so, quite simply because knowledge is in fact
a precondition for our having a relation to things in the world in the first place. This is
because, as Ryle puts it, we have or are in-the-world only if we know that at least one
something exists (Ryle, 1929, p. 221). For Ryle, then, Heidegger is guilty of having
forgotten the basic place of knowing in being-in-the-world and having failed to recognise
that a genuine phenomenological account of experience reveals that in all ways of being
interested in something, knowledge (at least in some form) is presupposed.

The charge of subjectivism

Having thus rejected Heideggers attempt to displace knowledge from the centre of our
relation to the world, Ryle goes on to level a second objection. This concerns the way
Heideggers account of being-about ostensibly turns objects into constituents of acts of
consciousness. Now, we glimpsed something of the basis for this criticism above when we
saw that Ryle characterises Heideggers account of the world as simply sum of what I am
about (Ryle, 1928, p. 216). Indeed, it is not too hard to see why Ryle moves from this to the
claim that Heideggers account of being-in-the-world makes all meanings man-constituted
(Ryle, 1929, p. 222). For, following Ryles reading, Heidegger has in fact turned the world
and events within it into a tissue of meanings that arise from acts of consciousness a
move that Ryle interprets as being based on a faulty account of meaning that Heidegger has
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inherited from the Lockean tradition. It is as a result of this inheritance that Ryle sees
Heideggers philosophy as ultimately resulting in a self-ruinous subjectivism or a windy
mysticism (Ryle, 1929, p. 222).

4. FORGING A NEW PATH

These criticisms, if accurate, cut quite deep. For, as was seen above, one of Heideggers
central aims was to overcome the pitfalls of Husserlian phenomenology and provide a
genuine phenomenological description of our lived experiences. Yet Ryles criticisms
suggest that, far from offering a challenge to the prevailing image of the thinking subject,
Heidegger remains entrenched within the very positions he sought to overcome. If Ryle is
correct on this, then Heideggers success in challenging the beaten tracks of modern
philosophy and offering a new account of thinking is seriously called into question. However,
as I indicated at the outset of this paper, I do not think that Ryle is correct. In fact, far from
enacting a devastating blow upon Heideggers account, I would argue that these criticisms
reveal Ryles own failure to think outside the beaten tracks of modern philosophy (at least
at this point in his work). To see why, we first need to re-consider Heideggers account of
being-in-the-world in its own terms. From this, it will become clear that Ryles twofold critique
is based on a misguided reading of the Heideggerian project.

Being-in-the-world reconsidered

Heideggers account of being-in-the-world arises out of his dissatisfaction with the traditional
way of understanding our relation to the world an understanding that can be captured
through Fichtes well-known instruction to think the wall, and then think the one who thinks
the wall. Heidegger argues that this model fundamentally distorts the ways in which our
thinking gets going for in our everyday dealings with the world we do not preside over
single, abstract objects (Heidegger, 1927a, p. 162). It is important to be clear about the
objection Heidegger is making here. For Heidegger is in no way suggesting that the
traditional way of understanding the subject-object relation is wholly erroneous. He is, rather,
pointing out that it only characterises one type of relation the epistemological relation.
Moreover, he is suggesting that this is in itself only a derivative form of relation, since we
only preside over objects by taking them out of the contexture or background within which
they are originally given to us.
It is for this reason that Heidegger employs the phrase being-in-the-world to
characterise the basic state from which all our experiences take place. It is also why he uses
the term Da-sein (being-there) to characterise the particular mode of human being-in-the-
world a term designed to capture its situated and related character. Contra Ryle, then,
Heidegger does a lot more than simply re-title the traditional image of the I that thinks here.
For he in fact challenges the whole idea this concept is based on viz. the notion that our
relation world is primarily a theoretical or cognitive process. Indeed, to the extent that we are
involved and engaged with the world, Heidegger claims that we first grasp things practically
and meaningfully rather than as objects that are available for our detached consideration. In
this way, he states that our primordial relationship with the world is a matter of concern or
involvement (besorgen) rather than one of reflection and detachment that were the
hallmarks of the Cartesian cogito.

Returning to Ryle

Even from this brief introduction we begin to see that there is a lot more at stake in
Heideggers account of Dasein and being-in-the-world than Ryle appears to recognise. For
Heideggers account looks to reveal some essential inadequacies with the disengaged
model of the subject insofar as it ignores the concrete, practical ways our thinking and
engagement with the world gets going in the first place. Heidegger does not, therefore,
simply forget the role that knowledge plays in being-in-the-world rather, he challenges the
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way the knower-know model has come to be prioritised in our understanding of thinking as a
result of the scholarly activity of epistemology. His attitude to knowledge is, contra Ryle, thus
more accurately described as a re-positioning than a forgetting.
Of course, this does not wholly deal with Ryles criticism for it was precisely this re-
positioning or decentralising of the epistemological relation that Ryle took issue with. Ryles
position, we may recall, is that our engagement with objects is only possible if we first know
that they exist. Yet, significantly, Ryles argument for this in his Review is more stated than it
is demonstrated and asserted rather than argued for. I say significantly here because, in
my view, this suggests that Ryle does not see this point as requiring much proof. What
reasons might there be for a philosopher to take a point as not requiring much proof? One
explanation is that he thinks it is already fairly obvious, having been demonstrated
elsewhere. However, and this is where things get tricky for Ryle: the elsewhere in this case
is the epistemological tradition stemming from Descartes. In other words, Ryles criticism of
Heidegger here appears to be resting on the weight of a previous tradition and Ryle
demonstrates himself to acquiescing in this tradition when he levels his knowledge objection
against Heidegger. I am not, of course, suggesting that Ryle has adopted a full blown
Cartesianism here. What I am suggesting, however, is that Ryle falls back on a key aspect of
this tradition viz. the assumed priority of the epistemological relation in his initial
objection to Heidegger. Yet what Ryle seems to have missed is the fact that it was precisely
this assumption that Heidegger sought to overturn in his account of being-in-the-world as
primarily practical rather than theoretical. In levelling his criticism against Heidegger in the
way he does it seems that Ryle (at least at this stage in his own work) has thus failed to both
appreciate Heideggers critique and free himself from the naive philosophical position
Heidegger was arguing against.
This suggestion is supported by Michael Murray in another paper that considers the
unlikely relationship between Heidegger and Ryle. Specifically, Murray argues that the Ryle
who reviews Being and Time is still too Cartesian to grasp the meaning of Heideggers
Cartesian critique and that his criticism of Heidegger in fact betrays his own commitment (at
least at this stage in his work) to both the subject and the object poles of the Cartesian
outlook (Murray, 1978, p. 274). Ryle fundamentally fails to appreciate that the whole thrust
of Heideggers account of being-in-the-world is to demonstrate that we do not first come to
know the existence of separate objects and then put them into relation to each other and
form a world. Rather, any knowledge we may have of things in the world is always going to
be grounded in the unitary phenomenon that is our being-in-the-world. It appears that Ryle
was not yet sufficiently free from the weighty inheritance of epistemology to appreciate this
point.

Beyond subjectivism

This point is further exemplified when we consider what is problematic in Ryles second
criticism of Heidegger. This, we may recall, levelled the charge that Heidegger ends up in a
position of self-ruinous subjectivism on account of his making all meaning constituents of
the acts of consciousness. However, contra Ryle, Heideggers account of meaning is not
bound to the acts of a disengaged subject. Rather, his account of meaning is bound up with
his discussion of the embedded and engaged subject and its way of relating to things as
tools rather than objects. More specifically, it is bound up with his claim that, given our basic
state of being-in-the-world, entities within the world show up for us, not as objects that stand
over and against us, but as things that are imbued with meanings and significances.
It is for this reason that Heidegger characterises the process of meaning-making as a
matter of interpretation. Interpretation, in the Heideggerian sense, in no way entails a
process whereby we simply throw a signification over some naked thing and stick a value
onto it (1927b, p. 190). Indeed, this way of characterising meaning-making would overlook
the fact that we already find ourselves immersed in a world of cultural meanings and
significances. The process of interpretation, for Heidegger, simply cannot take place from a
disengaged or neutral standpoint as though we first perceived objects as present at hand
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and then went on to see them as something, such as a house or a car. Rather, we
approach things with what Heidegger calls fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception as
things that are always already imbricated in a web of significances (1927b, p. 191).
As such, it would clearly be mistaken to claim that Heidegger takes meanings to be
man-constituted if by this we are implying, as Ryles charge of subjectivism appears to be,
that Heideggers theory of meaning is devoid of any frame of objective reference and
suggests that the subject simply creates meanings for objects in some abstract way. For
Heideggers account of meaning in no way suggests that Dasein wilfully creates meanings
ex nihilo. In fact, his account is much more subtle than this. As a being that is essentially
involved in the circle of interpretation, Dasein is caught up in a continual process of both
revealing and concealing meanings a process that Heidegger also describes as
disclosure (1927b, p. 105). There is much more that could be said about Heideggers
account here. However, what has been said thus far does enough for present purposes.
More specifically, it does enough to show that, far from turning back to subjectivist
metaphysics in the way Ryle suggests, Heideggers account of meaning seeks to provide a
more adequate account of what is at stake in our concrete engagement with the world than
is afforded by the traditional philosophy and, in particular, the disengaged knower of
epistemology.

5. RYLE REVISITED

Through responding to Ryle it has thus become clear (1) that Heideggers account of being-
in-the-world sets the terms for a radical reconsideration of the way we understand the
thinking subject and (2) that Ryle was still too entrenched within the traditional
epistemological outlook to actually appreciate it. However, it is important to draw attention
here to the caveat I have been including alongside this criticism viz. that it relates particularly
to Ryles early work. For Ryle, of course, came to be more conscious of any lingering
commitments to Cartesianism as his philosophical career progressed. As we approach the
end of this paper, let us briefly consider the direction this anti-Cartesianism takes Ryle in his
later work on thinking and see whether an affinity with Heidegger can again be glimpsed
on the horizon.
Notably, Ryle later makes the claim that thinking is a polymorphous concept and
thus appears concerned to combat the idea that thinking can be understood in a
straightforward or clear-cut manner (Ryle, 1953, p. 311). In fact, Ryle goes on to argue that it
is difficult for us to even talk about many forms of thinking simply because they do not
occur in a processional manner, but rather flow into and are inceptive of further thoughts
(Ryle, 1958, p. 416). Indeed, Ryle states, it is for this reason that figurative phrases such
as dawning or going over often come much closer to capturing an act of thinking that the
scientific chronicling of processions of thought that is attempted by the philosophers and
psychologists (Ryle, 1951, p. 277).
Linked to this, Ryle also critiques the way thinking is often understood in educational
terms as disciplined or regimented thinking. The problem with this, he states, is that it
gives the impression that good academic thinking is the kind of thinking that moves like
soldiers on the barrack-square whereby one evolution is smartly succeeded by another
evolution, one controlled pace forward is smoothly succeeded by one controlled step to the
right, and so on (Ryle, 1962b, p. 444). Of course, Ryle is well aware that there are times
when this form of thinking has educational import, such as in the mathematics classroom.
However, he claims, we should not make the mistake of thinking that this account of
disciplined thinking is well-applied to all kinds of thought simply because most thinking
(including broader types of academic thinking) is not like this. As Ryle puts it, academic
thinking needs time to germinate, grow, flower and seed it is not a five minutes task, like
a piece of long division (1962b, p. 445).
While it is not possible to fully explicate Ryles later reflections on thinking in this
paper, the abovementioned features already raise some interesting points. For it is clear that
Ryle is here being critical of the way a certain model of thinking has prevailed in philosophy
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at the expense of other ways of understanding thinking. Furthermore, it is clear that Ryle
saw these other ways of understanding thinking as being less easily describable than the
straightforward, processional accounts of thinking that are all-to-easily adopted by
philosophers. On these points, he comes close to what we have just seen from Heidegger.
Like Heidegger, Ryles later philosophy embraces the idea that in order to accurately
describe an act of thinking we need to give up the easy characterisations adopted by
traditional philosophers and attend more carefully to what is taking place when we think.

6. WAYS OF THINKING

The path we have followed in this paper is not one that is often trodden. Nevertheless, taking
it has led us to uncover a complex relationship between Ryle and Heidegger that has, in
turn, shed new light on their respective accounts of thinking. Through exploring their
surprising affinity, mediated around their shared confrontation with phenomenology, we saw
that both Ryle and Heidegger sought to offer an account of thinking that would escape the
account that had hitherto prevailed within philosophy. Furthermore, through assessing Ryles
twofold critique of Heidegger in his Review, we were able to perceive both Heideggers
success in setting the terms for such a project and Ryles failure (at least in the early stages
of his work) to rid himself of certain Cartesian commitments. This was something that,
however, we saw Ryle coming to address and his later attempt to challenge the simplistic
model of thinking that has obscured more complex (and yet concrete) ways of understanding
thinking brought him again into Heideggerian terrain.
This is not, of course, to suggest that either Heidegger or Ryles accounts of thinking
are completely beyond reproach. The aim of this paper has not been to adulate these
philosophers, but rather to lay the foundation for a renewed investigation into their respective
accounts of thinking. To this end, our journey has taken us some distance beyond the way
they are ordinarily interpreted most notably beyond the way Ryle is utilised in discussions
of thinking skills, which almost always focus on the distinction between knowing how and
knowing that, and not much else. It is worth recalling here that a certain amount of
controversy regarding the way Ryle has been utilised in discussions of thinking skills
already exists within the philosophical community. Indeed, a number of philosophers of
education have highlighted Ryles later characterisation of thinking as a polymorphous
concept in order to problematize the whole notion of thinking skills and suggest that the
ways of understanding thinking active in this conception are seriously impoverished
(Johnson, 2001; Glevey, 2008). What is significant about this is that it demonstrates that
some philosophers of education recognise that Ryles account of thinking is at once richer
and more complex than the thinking skills literature implies. Nevertheless, this richer
conception is not often explored any further in its own terms, and certainly no attention is
paid to the way that Ryles attempt to provide a more adequate description of acts of thinking
brings him close to phenomenological philosophy and Heidegger in particular.
This paper has sought to go where others do not. In doing so, it has uncovered a
different way of reading Ryle and one that has revealed certain limitations or blindnesses
within his early philosophy. On the other hand, it has also sought to indicate a way beyond
these limitations by considering Heideggers attempt to provide an account of thinking that
does justice to its engaged and embedded nature an endeavour that is itself not alien to
Ryles own later reflections on thinking.
In drawing this paper to a close I should like to recall the extent to which questions
regarding the nature of thinking have become a key issue for education, as debates
surrounding the concept of thinking skills continue to rage. It is my contention that a
renewed investigation into the accounts of thinking offered by Ryle and Heidegger opens up
new responses in this regard. Of course, I am not denying that Heidegger and Ryle take
different paths to achieve their respective accounts (and, in some cases, disagree with the
extent to which the other achieves his aim). Nevertheless, I am arguing that the affinities
uncovered in this paper at the very least call into question many assumptions we may have
Ahead of all Beaten Tracks": Ryle, Heidegger and the Ways of Thinking

9

regarding both the relation between these two thinkers and what they can contribute to the
ways in which we understand thinking in education.

NOTES

i
The phrase ahead of all beaten tracks is a description of philosophical thinking that Ryle
uses in his 1953 essay on Thinking; it bears comparison to Heideggers account of thinking
as the way and the Holzweg.



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