This article considers a series of ideas disturbing the conventional wisdom that decrees education an essential force in saving the world. Taking Morton's descriptions of hyperobjects seriously, we consider his radical idea that the world has ended amidst the eco-political depredations of the Anthropocene. Accordingly, we claim that education in modernity most properly belongs - materially and ideologically - with technological enframing and the rise of biopower. In other words, what is taken almost universally as the sacred realm of education (...) is, in fact, a contributory factor in the global eco-ontological crisis. Morton describes global warming, plastics and nuclear arsenals as hyperobjects: viscous, nonlocal entities that exist in temporal and spatial planes vastly different from our own immediate worlds. They are the threatening, difficult to access entities that express the Anthropocene. While most will propose that education will be vital in combating looming ecological apocalypse, we consider that education is a hyperobject itself. Education, we opine, is aligned with the forces and conditions that have generated the present crisis. This is because education embodies the same qualities as the hyperobjects of modernity; according to any rigorous historical ontology, education as we know it must be seen as the most extensive expression of a dangerous biopower that is beyond control. If this position is to be taken seriously, education is not merely impotent in combatting ecological catastrophe, but is a key apparatus supporting the Anthropocene. Education is thus another element of the end of the world. (shrink)

In this article, I elucidate the meaning of the act of philosophizing as a research activity in academia. My main thesis is that, as academic philosophers, we need to change our existing relation to thinking in academia, which requires a radical re-evaluation of the ēthos, or, the dwelling-place of philosophy. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s thought, I offer a place-based thinking, taking up the issue of being-in-academia as part of the question of dwelling. First, I explore the technological nature of being-in-academia (...) departing from Heidegger’s account of scientific research as ‘constant activity’. After identifying the ontological character of our situation in academia as captivation in the world, I bring up the matter of overcoming modern academia, discussing the possibility of orienting ourselves at the limits of education. I argue that reassessing our utilitarian relation to world and language, and recognizing the meontological dimension of thinking, is key for being able to de-structure academia and make room for ‘ontological freedom’. I conclude that the emergence of a new dwelling-place requires a poietic process of place-making at the limits of academia. (shrink)