What is Called Cheating? Heidegger, Commercial Surveillance, and Schooling

The authors examine the functions of online proctoring services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cheating itself is then examined using a four-part question from Martin Heidegger’s lecture What is Called Thinking? Aspects of this analysis include the historical conceptions of cheating and the environmental factors that lead to cheating. The authors determine that cheating is a response to the inauthenticity of schooling, as well as to the anxiety that accompanies modern conceptions of time. They conclude that learning is the existential call of responsibility for one’s being, and that a re-conception of education based on Heidegger’s conception of being and time would negate the incentives to cheat.