Here and Now. Rethinking philosophy of education

Abstract

The TV-series “Here and Now” (HBO 2018) may be seen as an allegory of the current situation within philosophy of education. The main character is the depressed philosopher Greg Boatwright, father of four: three adopted children - from Liberia, Vietnam and Colombia - and a biological daughter, who calls herself “the boring white chick in the family”. Raising this family was to Greg and his wife a “great progressive experiment in diversity”. However, on his 60th birthday he delivers a disturbingly pessimistic speech: “It all failed”. Later he confides to his daughter: “sometimes I feel like the world’s falling apart”. Admittedly, today’s philosophy of education may fall short of such a bleak description. Nevertheless, in face of such a situation it seems pertinent to re-think philosophy of education, old and new. The aim of this chapter is to explore to what degree Alain Badiou’s anti-philosophy may represent a way of doing so. In the first part of this chapter I map out the many faces of current philosophies of education. Next, I perform a close reading of Alain Badiou’s “ethics of truths” and “logic of worlds”. In doing so, I hope to reveal the ontological assumptions that generate Badiou’s philosophical position. In the third part of the chapter I compare and contrast Badiou’s position with some contemporary philosophies of education. Referring to Greg’s pessimistic speech we may ask: Did they all fail?