ABSTRACT
Conducting an “ontohistorical” analysis of education, thinking with and through Bildung and Plato’s paideia, Heidegger “seeks to effect nothing less than a re-ontologizing revolution in our understanding of education”. In 1937, the American Council on Education met to take up the issue of student personnel work, or what has come to be known as the field of Student Affairs in higher education. Excavating the ontological perspective in the historical, one comes to the realization that a very different discourse regarding the purposes of education was circulating in 1937. Communalism, conceived through Buddhism and Ubuntu, is inherently imbued with a requisite moral or ethical understanding. In practice, onto-educational philosophy informed by Ubuntu regards (un)learners as reasonable beings and recognizes their natural ability to make meaning of the various texts and concepts. Institutions of higher education, (re)thought through Buddhism and Ubuntu, are democratic or focus on building consensus for the good of the whole.
