Starting from its launch in China in 2016 as Douyin, the social media platform, TikTok, has become a worldwide success. According to a statistical report conducted in January 2022, TikTok is available in over 150 countries and 75 languages, and is the fastest growing social media application worldwide. As expected, such a phenomenon has given rise…

This paper is an investigation of pedagogical tact in terms of vigilance. It is based on a close reading of a passage from Rousseau's "Emile:" a (problematic and troubling) narrative account on the art of hosting a dinner party. Working with the narrative of the dinner party, distinctions are drawn between contrasting ways of knowing,…

In his 'Towards the Critique of Violence', Walter Benjamin introduces the concept of 'educative violence' as a contemporary manifestation of 'divine violence'. In this paper, we aim to interpret 'educative violence' by examining other instances where the young Benjamin addresses pedagogical issues. By connecting the concept of divine violence to…

While attention has long been a concern in western philosophy and eastern spirituality, technologies (e.g., social media, gaming) and pathologies (e.g., attention deficit disorders) have recently foregrounded the issue specifically in education. Issues of "student" absorption and diversion have been widely discussed; comparatively less…

This paper considers what is at stake in the idea of universitas--a community of masters and scholars --in the context of the shifting landscape of higher education engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, we consider what it means to be together in a university community. We draw a distinction between the…

Our discussion addresses Benjamin's antifascist education through the lens of aesthetic education and Herbert Marcuse's aesthetic theory. While this theme is not explicitly discussed in Lewis' book, we argue that it is essential for understanding the full political and educational potential of what he calls "the art of straying in the…

This article delves into the multifaceted nature of pedagogy, examining its role as both a practical pursuit and an academic discipline concerned with education and upbringing. Positioned within the context of modernity, the overarching objective of pedagogy is framed as the cultivation of a free subject in communities of free people, emphasizing…

Social Education implies a constant exposition to human experiences of vulnerability and suffering. In this paper, Levinas's philosophy of alterity and, specifically, the notion of hospitality constitutes our ethical lens to explore educational encounters in non-formal contexts within the Spanish Social Sector. The study is developed from a…

This paper argues that the idea of intrinsic worth encompasses all human beings, no matter how they are circumstanced. This concept needs to be understood transcendentally, not prescriptively. These terms are explained, with particular reference to Kant. It also argues that discourses of identity and recognition can best be understood through the…

The period March 2020-March 2021 marks the time reference for this theoretical study as it denotes the initial surge of the Pandemic, where whole societies were destabilized by the ferocity of COVID-19. Within this context, I posit COVID-19 as a transforming event: one that exhausts "worlds." Drawing from Jan Masschelein's works on…

Many political and economic forces are driven by the desire to eliminate democratic plurality in today's political juncture. Democratic republicanism itself in its contemporary forms has failed to address many of the daunting moral, political, economic, social, technological, and ecological challenges we face today. It is argued that to fulfill…

This paper is a reflective response to Tena Thau's suggestion -- in her 2024 piece 'Moral Philosophy as War Propaganda' -- that philosophy has little to teach about the war in Gaza (and, by extension, similar cases of widespread, horrific human suffering). I first reconstruct one of the arguments that Thau makes in her piece. I then show that her…

Can "on-line" 'place-based learning' be more than a facsimile or ritual? Using a phenomenology of my pandemic practice, I investigate the meaning of 'place-based learning:' entertaining Aristotle's seminal thought on place as a container to venture into contemporary phenomenological inquiries where places and things are not only…

I argue that Spinoza attributes to society the role of moral educator, a role that is to be carried out via Religion and Politics and hence also via an educational system. In his account, the social body is given the task of applying and transmitting a notion of virtue whose criterion is enhanced freedom, yet that freedom paradoxically must be…

This paper invites us to reconsider our usual understanding of infancy, no longer as something that passes but as "infantia." The Latin word "infantia," which is not easy to translate, means a lack of speech, a lack of eloquence, and also infancy, babyhood, and dumbness. Drawing on Barbara Cassin's works on the untranslatables,…