Martinus Jan Langeveld (1905–1989) was one of the most prominent educational theorists in the Netherlands in the second half of the twentieth century. He was one of the originators of the Dutch tradition of “pedagogiek” (“pedagogy”; but see further, section “A Note on Translation”) and was the founder of the study of “pedagogiek” at the university in the Netherlands after WWII. During his own years of study he was mentored by the Dutch philosopher and educational theorist Philipp Kohstamm and the Dutch philosopher Hendrik Pos and was taught by such prominent philosophers and scholars as (among others) Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Wilhelm Stern, Karl Jaspers, Herman Nohl, and Ernst Cassirer. He obtained his doctorate in 1934 with a dissertation entitled “Taal en Denken” (Language and Thinking), under the supervision of Kohnstamm.

It was Kyoto School scholar Shuji Wada who went to study with the Dutch educationalist Martinus Jan Langeveld (1905–1989) in The Netherlands in the 1960s. He invited him to visit Kyoto after his retirement a number of times and saw that Langeveld’s main work was translated into Japanese. That’s the way Langeveld’s thought became of great impact of the Kyoto School as a whole. This chapter focuses on Langeveld’s theoretical work. After a brief introduction to his life and work, Langeveld’s outlook on his subject is explained: pedagogy as practical science. Then his pedagogic theory and how it links in with anthropology and developmental psychology are explained. His particular use of the phenomenological method is examined next, showing how this connects with situation analysis: the analysis of what those who are responsible for bringing up children are to do. Finally Langeveld’s relevance today is considered.