Mid-Year Public Event

Join us for the 2026 Mid-Year Symposium, What Are Philosophers of Education For in a Destitute Time?, on Thursday 6 August from 6:00–7:30 pm AEST at the University of Melbourne.

Light refreshments will be provided.

Featuring Maurizio Toscano, Nataša Ciabatti, Jing Su, Jake Muir and David Clements, the symposium will consider how philosophers of education respond to a world in which traditional sources of meaning appear increasingly unsettled. Through questions concerning Indigenous cosmologies, artificial intelligence, identity, the other-than-human and the possibility of a shared humanity, the event invites participants to reflect on whether education is creating new forms of the sacred, recovering forgotten ones, or learning to live with their absence. Registration is available through Humanitix.

What are philosophers of education for in a destitute time?

But alas! We’ve come too late. For, though the gods still live on,
It’s up in the other world they are, over our heads.
There they’ve not ceased. And yet, such is their gentle forbearance,
It seems they no longer care to be bothered with us.
For we’re delicate vessels, we mortals, easily shattered,
And their presence is pressure we can scarcely sustain.

Bread and Wine (segment) – Friedrich Hölderlin

The gods have fled. The fires that once gathered us, set on a hill, in a temple, in the hearth, are extinguished. In their stead, plagues of fireflies torment us with their dark seductive light.

Are philosophers of education unwittingly preparing a new home for the gods? The turn towards Indigenous cosmologies; the supremacy of the other and sanctity of the stranger; our neo-gnostic entanglements with the other-than-human; our bewitchment with AI as a deus ex machina; ritualised identities and magical selfhood; the call for a rational, globalised humanity: are these not attempts to cope with our exile from a once sacred world? Are philosophers of education trying to re-imagine and re-impose the holy…or simply remember it? What are we forgetting?

https://events.humanitix.com/pesa-mid-year