This paper primarily aims at conceptualizing a new philosophical approach to literature education, one that we--in the vein of certain pedagogical trends--propose to call "thing-centered". Point of departure is the ongoing confrontation with a two-sided educational problem: on the one hand, the confrontation with the steady decline of…

This article turns to the neglected pedagogical concept of "ingenium" in order to address some shortcomings of the admiration-emulation model of Linda Zabzebski's influential exemplarist moral theory. I will start by introducing the problem of the admiration-emulation model by way of a fictional example. I will then briefly outline the…

While thrusting the importance of knowledge, Bertrand Russell highlights one special "utility" of it, i.e., knowledge promotes a widely contemplative habit of mind; and such knowledge, he terms 'useless'. For Russell, the habit of contemplation is the capacity of rationalized enquiry which enables individuals to consider all questions in…

The purpose of this paper is to introduce everyday aesthetics in education. First, it presents everyday aesthetics as a subdiscipline within philosophical aesthetics, that revisits sensory perception as the backdrop of all experience, claims ordinary life is a proper venue for aesthetic inquiry, and problematizes the impact aesthetic preferences…

This paper assumes that educators are now involved in a struggle for their souls and for the souls of their students. The idea of the soul in this case is not the religious one, but the soul invoked by Foucault (1977) to name that aspect of self, (subjectivity, psyche) that 'exists, or is produced … within the body … or born … out of methods of…

This article assesses Bernard Stiegler's critique of infantilization. Contemporary education--and society in general--would no longer develop children into adults, but would keep them in their childish state. Stiegler's critique is explicitly inspired by Enlightenment ideals, characterized by a positive notion of maturity and a negative notion of…

The article seeks to reclaim a type of fear lost in silent omission in education, yet central to the development of an ethical subject. It distinguishes the fear described by Martin Heidegger through the concept of "befindlichkeit" and fear for the other as an essential moment for ethics articulated by Emmanuel Levinas. It argues that…

In the South Korean film, "The Parasite," the underling family, in an act of desperation, uses deceptive means to infiltrate the rich family. The term parasite refers nominally to the underling family, and their efforts to befriend and inhabit the class territory and social hierarchy of the rich family. How can this be of use for…

I here explore the educational potential of cinema and TV-series through the eyes of the French philosopher Alain Badiou. To illustrate, I read the Norwegian web-based TV-series "Skam" (shame), which reached out to millions of Nordic teens by a broad distribution, easy access and speaking a language young people could relate to. The…

Through readings of Jacques Derrida's "Of Grammatology" and 'The Age of Hegel', attention is given to two of the problematic types of relationships that philosophy can have with education (exemplified through Derrida's readings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and G.W.F. Hegel). These engagements, alongside a reading of 'The Antinomies of the…

Derrida's autobiographical and philosophical text 'Monolingualism of the Other; or, the Prosthesis of Origin" is a partial recounting of his own childhood and upbringing in Algeria at a time when it was a colony of France. It is on one level a reflection on matters related to colonialism, and especially on the effects of the imposition of…

This essay analyzes Derrida's questioning of the relationship between "Theory and Practice" in his recently published seminar of 1976-1977 of this same title. It traces Derrida's reading of this relationship in Marx and Marxism, beginning with various interpretations (such as Althusser's) of the famous line from Marx's "Theses on…

The relationship between national languages and schooling is a recurring theme in Derrida's writings on education, playing an important role in the challenge he mounts to traditional understandings of the French State's involvement in the teaching of philosophy. In this essay, I follow this thread of thinking across several of Derrida's texts,…

Post-critical pedagogy, which offers a significant alternative to the dominant trends in contemporary philosophy of education, objects to seeing education as instrumental to other ends: it attempts to conceive of education as "autotelic," namely as having intrinsic value. While there are good reasons for accepting the post-critical…

Humanist ideas in education have been promoted by both Western thinkers and classical wisdom texts of Asia. Exploring this connection, I examine the educational philosophy of an iconic ancient Tamil (Indian) text, the "Thiruvalluvar Kural," by juxtaposing it with a contemporary humanist classic, Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of the…