This paper explores the mystical structure of education as Bildung in medieval theologian and Dominican friar Meister Eckhart's work and the 2010 French film "Of Gods and Men" ("Des Hommes et Des Dieux"). I start this paper with a short introductory sketch of the "Bildung" tradition, in order to situate my discussion…

This study examines the challenges of humanism and education in the 21st century as addressed by the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk in his Elmau Speech (1999). In this lecture, titled "Rules for the Human Zoo", Sloterdijk argues that the traditional notion of humanism, specifically "humanism as a literary society," has…

We propose a semiotic framework to underpin a posthumanist philosophy of education, as contrasted to technological determinism. A recent approach to educational processes as semiotic phenomena lends itself as a philosophy to understand the current interplay between education and technology. This view is aligned with the transhumanist movement to…

This article analyses ChatGPT from the perspective of the philosophy of education. It explores ChatGPT's implications for universities, focussing on the intertwined concepts of critical thinking, the crisis of higher education, and humanity. Does ChatGPT sound the death knell for critical thinking and, thus, exacerbate the oft-diagnosed 'crisis in…

This essay offers a critique of the culture of specio-vocationalism in American higher education by first drawing on Edmund Husserl's conception of "world" and connecting this notion to education conceived as a "world-disclosing" activity. The essay will then give an account of how the trends of vocationalization and…

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…

Using Deleuzian theory for educational research and practice has become an increasingly popular activity (e.g., Cole 2011). However, there are many theoretical complexities to the straightforward application of Deleuze to the educational context. For example, the 'new materialism' that Deleuze refers to in the 1960s takes its inspiration from…

This article is the result of a mutual interest in the radical philosophical dialogue discussed by Martin Buber. The radical dialogue is rooted in western European values of humanism, values that are challenged because they exclude women, people with disabilities, non-western, indigenous people and sexual minorities. With our basis in radical…

"What (Whose) purpose does your knowledge serve?" In her book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, Martha Nussbaum states the difference between a democratic education for citizenship and an education for profit, and draws attention to the current education crisis caused by an overvaluation of the latter over the former.…

In this essay, I investigate the human act of spectatorship as found in the work of John Dewey and Paulo Freire. I will show that each is thoroughly anti-watching when it comes to educational practices. I then problematize their positions by looking at their spectatorial commitments in the realm of aesthetics. Both Dewey and Freire have a…

As the most prominent initiative in the open education movement, the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is often claimed to disrupt established educational models through the use of innovative technologies that overcome geographic and economic barriers to higher education. However, this paper suggests that the MOOC project, as a typical example of…

In this essay, I demonstrate the value of the Bildungsroman for philosophy of education on the grounds that these narratives raise and explore educational questions. I focus on a short story in the Bildungsroman tradition, Thomas Hardy's "A Mere Interlude". This story describes the maturation of its heroine by narrating a series of…

At times, an individual in modernity can feel dehumanised by work, by administration, by technology, and by political power. This experience of being dehumanised can take the individual to an existential awareness of the priority of existence over essence. But what does this existential experience mean? Are there ways in which this experience can…

What are the conditions required for becoming better human beings? What are our limitations and possibilities? I understand "becoming better" as a combined improvement process bringing persons "up from" a negative condition and "up to" a positive one. Today there is a tendency to understand improvement in a one-sided way as a movement up to the…

The present paper is about the author's current research on children's education in urban contexts. It departs from the rising offer of programmes for school children in out-of-school contexts (e.g. museums, libraries, science centres). It asks what makes these practices educational (and not just interesting, entertaining and/or audience…