The End of Education

This chapter considers the role of philosophy in our time, including some gloomy ruminations on impending crisis in the Anthropocene, including the possibility of species extinction. How can philosophy address the world after the death of God, without recourse to a saving principle? Various positions addressing the present condition in terms of crisis are addressed as important modes of understanding. In relation to this, my attempts to rethink the role of education in the modern and contemporary world order are revisited. I identify several following lines of thought, mostly derived from Heidegger’s reintroduction of ontology into western thinking, as possible entry points for exploration of ‘thinking otherwise’ and of eschewing the ontotheological commitment of most contemporary discourse on the meaning and value of education in our world. The work of philosophy, it is asserted is not done, and, with some struggle, productive lines of thinking emerge that seem to entail a very serious revaluation of all values and assumptions. This may include a rejection of ways of thinking that promote unbounded progress in the name of some powerfully, historically rooted modes of knowing, thinking and feeling that come from tragedy, specifically Attic tragedy as articulated by Nietzsche as a possible antidote to the false promises of education’s self-misrecognition.